§ MR. HOWELL (Bethnal Green, N.E.)I beg to ask the First Lord of the Admiralty whether a quantity of condemned beef and pork was sold on the 20th January last at Hong Kong instead of being sent home; whether, before being sold, it was treated as condemned stores are now treated at Deptford, so as to render it impossible that they should be afterwards sold to ships in the Mercantile Navy; and whether he will give orders that all stores of provisions condemned at stations abroad be sent home, or else that all such condemned stores shall be treated as condemned stores are now treated at Deptford before they are sold?
§ THE FIRST LORD OF THE ADMIRALTY (Lord GEORGE HAMILTON,) Middlesex, EalingI do not think it is likely that anything of the kind suggested in the question has happened, as explicit directions were sent in December, 1889, to all Naval Depots abroad, including Hong Kong, that all condemned salt meat and suet was in future not to be offered for sale, but was to be destroyed, and, further, that any other articles of food that might be pronounced unfit for human consumption were to be similarly destroyed.