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213 [1902
allowed to be sold at all in places or shops where a general business is also
conducted, because it is almost impossible to keep it free from dust and the
other impurities which are common to such businesses. In one instance
your Medical Officer of Health found milk being sold in a shop which
was so crowded with boxes and lumber that it was only possible for one person
to gain access to it at a time, and judging from appearances also impossible to
keep it clean and free from dust. A remonstrance from your officer induced
this tradesman to cease its sale.
THE ADULTERATION OF FOOD AND DRUGS.
The duty of taking samples of food and drugs for analysis by the Public
Analyst devolves on your district Inspectors and also on Inspector Ward, but
mainly on him. The former in rotation only procure samples of milk on
Sundays, and once in three months at the Railway Station. Altogether 932
samples were purchased or procured during the year, of which 136, or 14.6 per
cent., were adulterated, as compared with 15 per cent, in 1901, and an average
of I2.2 per cent, in the preceding ten years. The percentage decrease of adulteration
on the preceding year is so small, that the figures may be almost considered
identical. This similarity in the returns is due mainly to the fact that the
Inspectors on whom fell the chief responsibility of obtaining samples, mainly
Inspector Cowling, who has since retired, in igoi,and Inspector Ward in 1902
adopted similar practices—(a) purchasing largely by agents, whom they first
made customers at the places of business at which they ultimately took samples,
and (b) taking samples from persons about whom they had a reasonable
suspicion that they were not trading honestly. Honest traders were for the
most part, but not altogether, unmolested. The result of this course of procedure
in 1902 was that whereas the proportion of adulterated samples
detected by the ordinary Inspectors was 5.9 per cent., in the case of Inspector
Ward it was 20.3 per cent.