Ambassador White to the Secretary of State.

No. 247.]

Sir: With reference to your instruction No. 114, of the 20th ultimo, I have the honor to inform you that I found upon my return to Italy from a recent brief visit to England and Austria that the question of the inspection by examiners appointed by Italian consuls in the United States of meat and meat products to be shipped to this country had been thoroughly and—as it turned out yesterday when I went to the foreign office—effectively dealt with by Mr. Hitt, who had been in constant correspondence with Messrs. H. Kuehn & Co., of Genoa, the representatives at that port of several of our leading-packing firms, and has several times represented to the foreign office the hardships and impropriety of the inspection in question.

Yesterday I called there with the intention of making it quite clear that as soon as our inspection service should be completely organized, under the act of Congress of June 30 last, we should expect this and other foreign governments to receive without qualification our Government’s official certificate. The under secretary of foreign affairs informed me, however, the moment I mentioned the subject, that the matter had been arranged satisfactorily, Italian consuls in the United States having been instructed to confine their efforts in [Page 957] future to the authentication of our Government’s official certificate of examination. He added that the orders for the inspection by representatives of the consuls, which have caused so much inconvenience, were issued by the chief of the public health department, a branch of the ministry of the interior, without the knowledge of or any communication with the foreign office.

I thereupon sent you a cipher telegram of which the translation is inclosed.

I explained to the under secretary the elaborate provisions contained in our new act of Congress for the inspection, in all its stages, of the meat-packing industry, and he said that our official certificate of inspection, duly authenticated by Italian consuls in the United States, will be entirely satisfactory to this Government, without any other examination or inspection in its behalf in the United States.

I have, etc.,

Henry White.