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38
APPENDIX
Report of the Public Analyst (C. Harcourt Wordsworth, B.Sc.,
F.R.I.C.) for the year ended 31st December, 1959.
To the Mayor, Aldermen and Councillors
of the Metropolitan Borough of Paddington.
Your Worship, Ladies and Gentlemen,
During the year 1959, six hundred samples were purchased
by your Inspectors for examination under the provisions of the
Food and Drugs Act, 1955. All the samples were taken informally.
In the wide variety of foods and drugs examined a total of
twenty-two were considered to be unsatisfactory. This figure
includes samples submitted as a result of complaints by members
of the public. These complaints, frequently associated with foreign
bodies in food, show few signs of diminishing in numbers, and appear
partly to be related to the publicity and emphasis given to pure food.
One offender is the milk bottle containing a foreign body, which,
after some years spent in examining these samples, now seems to
include anything which can pass through the neck of the bottle.
In the days when milk was sold from churns and cans on the
doorstep "added water" was the main offender. Now, there
appear to be very few cases of deliberate watering and in general
the quality of milk is good, but the introduction of the milk bottle
has brought its own problems, particularly to those who must clean
and fill them.

Several samples bore labels which were not considered to be
wholly satisfactory and included a can of Mixed Vegetables which
used the ambiguous term "and/or" in the list of contents. Samples
of a canned pudding and pie were described as having been "packed
under official supervision," which the manufacturers justified by
explaining later that such wording was needed for their export trade.
A sample of Prefluffed Rice was stated to contain "B Vitamins,"
although no amount of vitamin was disclosed. Such statements must
include a quantitative measure of the vitamin and the amount present
in the food normally consumed in one day must also be greater than
one-sixth of the minimum daily requirement of that particular
vitamin, before any claim to its presence can be made.