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sented on the Food Advisory Committee staged exhibits. The
Exhibition was opened by Commander Campbell, of Brains Trust
fame, and Mr. S. C. A. Miller, the Chairman of the Council,
who was also the Chairman of the Food Advisory Committee.
The Education Authority consented to the attendance of organised
parties of school children, and the Head Teachers co-operated
fully, both at the Exhibition itself, at the film shows and lectures
and by organising an Essay Competition for groups of children
afterwards. There were 1,665 attendances during the week, and
as this was one of the first efforts of its kind and could not be held
in a central situation it was felt that the interest shown and the
opportunities of disseminating Clean Food propaganda justified
the work and expense entailed.
The Model Byelaws, relating to handling, storage and preparation
of food, came into operation in August, 1950. While
it is important that there shall be no diminution in efforts to
secure a positive attitude to improvement in food handling, these
Byelaws give the Council the power to require the standards that
the Guilds established by some authorities have been attempting
to secure in the absence of legislative powers.
Food and Drugs Act. It will be seen that 167 samples were
submitted to the Public Analyst during the year. This represents
2.2 per thousand, slightly more than the 2 per thousand which
was arbitrarily regarded as the proper figure at the time the Act
was passed. It will be remembered that at that time there was
no difficulty over obtaining a wide diversity of foodstuffs available
for sampling. Since that time, too, there has been a great increase
in the time necessarily devoted to the supervision of Ice
Cream and during the year 64 samples were submitted for
chemical and bacteriological examination. The increasing number
of articles of food that now have standards laid down for
their composition has been of great value in securing satisfactory
quality and it will increasingly strengthen our position with regard
to many articles of every day diet over which we used to have
very little effective control.
Water Supply. The district is supplied by the Metropolitan
Water Board and by the Sutton District Water Company. Their
respective distributive areas being approximately the parishes
of Merton and Morden.
The supply of the Metropolitan Water Board is only sampled
infrequently as a routine, otherwise samples are taken when
circumstances indicate the necessity for local investigation.
The Board supplies copies of their official minutes in which the
results of the examinations are recorded.
Routine examinations of the Sutton District Water Company's
supply are undertaken by the Authorities in the supply
area upon an agreed rota, which provides for bacteriological and
chemical samples each month. The Company, in addition to the
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