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57
to analyse personally. With the increase in cost of apparatus and the
specialised knowledge required to be able to operate some of this
apparatus this provision has become essential.
From the point of view of the public analyst and of the Local Authority
a most unfortunate insertion was made in the Act on the third Reading in the
House of Commons and it has been impossible to have this removed. This is
the clause relating to what has been christened as the "Bob-a-nob"
certificate or the provision that the Local Authority must supply, any vendor
of a sample who demands it with a copy of the public analyst's certificate
on payment of a fee of one shilling. A public analyst can only report on a
sample to the best of his ability and knowledge. It is sometimes impossible
to detect the presence of some deleterious substance car the destruction of
some essential constituent in a food without inside information or very
specialised knowledge in a particular field. He may, therefore, occasionally
report an adulterated product as satisfactory. During the late war it was
a common practice for certain disreputable manufacturers to ask Local
Authorities "whether samples had been reported as genuine by public analysts
and to use such report when any adverse comments were made. There appears,
moreover, to be nothing to prevent copies of these certificates being used
for advertisement purposes.
Care will have to be exercised in bringing into permanent legislation
much of the temporary legislation now in force. Thus the new Act specified
that "chewing gum" is a food, but the Mineral Oil in Food Order prohibits
the presence of mere than 0.2 per cent of mineral hydrocarbons in foods,
other than dried fruit, which may contain 0.5 per cent, and citrus fruit
which may only contain 0.1 per cent. Chewing gum generally contains up to
4 per cent of one or other of the various paraffin wax hydrocarbon products.
The Food Standards (Margarine) Order 1954, made it compulsory to add
vitamin A and vitamin D to margarine and prescribed the method for the
determination of vitamin A.
The Food Standards (Soft Drinks) (Amendment) Order, 1954, permitted soft
drinks to be made from fruit juice with or without added sugar and in concentrated
or frozen form.
During the year all ordinary control Orders relating to the rationing
of manufacture or consumption of foods have been revoked leaving their manufacture
and sale mere flexible. These revocations, unless controls are
introduced under the new Food and Drugs Consolidation Act, may entail greater
care before manufacturers are prosecuted or warned.
A Report was issued by the Food Standards Committee on Antioxidants in
foods and recommended that propyl, octyl, or dedecyl gallates or mixtures of
these should be permitted up to 0.02 per cent in alible oils and fats and
O.l per cent in essential (that is volatile flavouring) oils. Alternatively
butylated hydroxyanisole should be permitted in quantities up to 0.02 and
O.l per cent respectively.
A fresh Report on lead was issued by the Food Standards Committee
proposing that a general limit of 0.2 parts per million should be imposed on
ready-to-drink beverages and 2.0 parts per million in other foods. Various