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it for soap-making my answer is that by a suitable process it could
be freed from the objectionable constituents and sold as renovated
butter, but such a proposition was never put before me. lam fully
alive to the difficulties of proving positive danger to health from
using this butter in cakes and confectionery, but even supposing
this point was not proved to the satisfaction of the Court I still
hold that it is unsound and unwholesome, and having made my
protest, am freed from the responsibility of allowing a trade in
unsound butter for confectionery purposes to spring up without
acquainting the public of the nature of the constituents used in the
making of cakes and confectionery by certain firms.
As the "firm of very high standing" which negotiated for the
purchase of this butter preferred that their name should not be made
public, I think it is quite legitimate to draw the conclusion that they
were ashamed of their bargain. A vendor or importer of butter
can be summoned for having 1 per cent. of water in his butter above
the prescribed standard, but it seems as if an importer may have
3 or 4 per cent. free fatty acids with impunity.
The question of the use of raw materials which are actually
unsound or just on the border line is a very wide one, and I feel very
strongly that those gentlemen who support a low standard in the
manufacture of food are taking a very grave responsibility and
opening the door to many abuses.
I have already given two instances of such abuses which have
come within my personal experience and others I have met are the
"working off" unsound coffee and cocoa berries among good ones
or if too unsound in bulk making extracts; making flour from
unsound and damaged wheat; and utilising damaged and unsound
rice for food; using bad eggs for pastry, and lastly, unsound butter
for cakes, toffee, etc. Many more examples might be cited, but those
above-mentioned will suffice. In fact some traders and manufacturers
seem to think that certain raw products are rarely if ever
so bad as to be incapable of being utilised for food and one scientific
witness in the above case included butter among these. A view
seems further to exist among many people fostered by interested