View report page

87
The number of Butters or Margarines containing excessive water
has much diminished. There have been only two this year, and no
cases of adulteration of butter with margarine have been observed,
though another form of this practice still takes place in certain eating
houses, for five lots of bread and butter ordered by your Inspectors
as bread and butter were found to consist of bread and margarine.
There have been some few infringements of the Preservative
Regulations. Four lots of Sausages contained Sulphur Dioxide without
the Statutory Declaration, and two meat products contained traces
of boric acid.
A number of samples of Grey Powder were examined and two
contained 28 and 21 per cent. of mercury respectively instead of the
33 per cent. required by the British Pharmacopoia. It is well known
that there is much difficulty in mixing Grey Powder, so a fairly wide
limit of error should be adopted, but when a sample contains so little
as 21 instead of 33 per cent., the deficiency seems to be beyond a
reasonable limit of error.
Some of the meat products, sausages and meat and fish pastes
contained rather large proportions of water, in some cases so much,
that it is doubtful whether the purchaser obtained that proportion of
meat which he might reasonably expect, but there is no legal limit at
present. This matter is of some importance because in the homes of
those who are less well-to-do sausages often form a major part of the
meat supply for the week; they ought, therefore, to contain a full
proportion of meat.
The total number of samples regarded as adulterated is 18 or
36 per cent. There were also minor cases of slight infringements of
Regulations. The word " adulterated " is perhaps an unfortunate one,
as this term really only applies to some of the samples, the others
might better be termed " unsatisfactory," but for purposes of classification
under the Act must be reported as " adulterated."
It is clear that there is still need of careful control of the food
supplies, so that the purchaser may really get the kind and quality of
food which he desires.
I have the honour to remain,
Your obedient Servant,
H. E. COX,
Borough Analyst.