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and isolated; whilst later Acts were more or less in the way of being
Amending Acts which altered minor points in the mother Act, or, as in
the recent Preservative Regulations, broke fresh ground, thus bringing
the Acts into closer agreement with modern knowledge.
The Act of 1875 started off by defining food as "every article used
for food or drink by man, other than drugs or water," a very comprehensive
and simple, yet effective definition. It then proceeded to state
that "no person shall sell to the prejudice of the purchaser any article
of food .... which is not of the nature, substance, and quality of the
article demanded" and set out in some detail methods to be adopted by
Inspectors when taking samples of suspected food. Here matters were
not quite so clear.
In the first place it was necessary in 1879 in the Sale of Food
and Drugs (Amendment) Act to state that if an Inspector bought an
adulterated sample for analysis he was just as much prejudiced as if
he had bought it in the ordinary way for consumption.
Secondly, it was difficult to define exactly what was meant by the
terms "nature, substance, and quality demanded," and many conflicting
decisions were given by magistrates, so that what one trader was
punished for in one district, another trader, to use a popular phrase,
" got away with it " in another district.
In the case of spirits, for instance, it was obvious that when a man
bought whisky he did not expect pure alcohol. By the Sale of Food
and Drugs (Amendment) Act of 1879, this particular point was cleared
up, and it was stated that the legal standard for spirits was to be
25 degrees under proof, this being altered later, by the Licensing Act
of 1921 to 35 degrees under proof. The same applies to brandy, rum
and gin.
Unfortunately there is still lacking any definite standard of purity
for many foods, with the result that there is a great deal of confusion.
It is impossible at present to deal with some forms of adulteration,
simply because there is no authority for saying that when a man asks
for such and such a food he expects an article of such and such a
nature, substance and quality.
However, since the initial Act of 1875 over 90 per cent. of
prosecutions under the act have been in respect of this section.