View report page

71
quantities of these permitted preservatives, except that foods containing
melon may not contain more than 10 parts of orthophenylphenol for every
million parts of melon in the food. It is difficult to understand why
melons are permitted to be treated with 125 parts per million of
orthophenylphenol. The skin of melons, like that of the related
squash families, is hard, and therefore more resistant to attack than
that of many other fruits, but the melon is a very juicy fruit and
many consumers of melon are apt to spoon up the juice from their plates,
thereby consuming a large proportion of the preservative. It does not
seem to have been realised, moreover, that the area of the skin of a fruit
is proportional to the square of the radius, whereas the weight, or volume,
is more or less proportional to the cube of the radius, so that the larger
the fruit the less should be the quantity of preservative in parts per
million required to cover the area of the skin.
The Antioxidant in Food Regulations. 1958.
These regulations provide for the sale and importation of certain
foods, which contain propyl, octyl, and dodecyl gallates, butylated
hydroxyanisole and butylated hydroxytoluene within certain limits.
Essentially these regulations permit the addition of these compounds
to anhydrous edible oils and fats, to vitamin oils and concentrates,
to butter for manufacturing purposes, and to essential oils and their
flavouring constituents. Since ingredients are allowed to contain antioxidants
provision is made for the resultant foods to do so. With our
present knowledge it is extremely difficult to determine the quantitiy of
anti-oxidants in oils and the difficulty of doing so in prepared foods is
much greater. There has been a considerable amount of discussion as to
whether legislation should or should not be enacted before it is capable
of being fully implemented, but if one were always to adopt the practice
that legal requirements must follow the development erf scientific knowledge
to enable their ready enforcement, food laws would lag even further behind
than they do at the present time. It is generally found that science
manages to catch up with legislation and public analysts owe much to the
willing help received from their colleagues in industrial laboratories for
information on some of these delicate matters.
Labelling of Food (Amendment) Regulations. 1958.
This amendment revokes Article 8 (d) of the Labelling of Food Order,
so that alcoholic cocktails need no longer contain 4.0 per cent of Proof
Spirit, but they will need to be labelled with the quantity of spirit
which is present.
Copper in Foods.
The Ministers of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, and of Health duly
considered the Report of the Food Standards Committee and decided not to
issue any fresh Regulation, but recommended limits, which they hope will
be adopted. In general it has been found that recommendations of this
type are accepted for enforcement purposes and are not disputed by trade
interests.