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209
Adulteration or Baking Powder and other Commodities.
The following letter was submitted to the Public Health and Housing
Committee:—
Borough of Southwark.
Town Hall,
Walworth Road, S.E.
30th September, 1914.
Dear Sir,
lie Adulteration of Baking Powder and other Commodities.
I am instructed by my Public Health Committee to submit for
your consideration particulars of the following case:—
At the Lambeth Police Court on the 10th inst., the vendor
of a sample of baking powder was prosecuted for selling adulterated
baking powder. The sample in question contained 2.4
per cent. of available carbon dioxide, and was certitied as being
60 per cent. deficient in available carbon dioxide, using the
6 per cent. standard.
My Council as prosecutors admitted that there was no legal
standard for this commodity.
The defence was based on the following proposition, viz., that
the sample in question was a large packet which cost a Id., the amount
of powder contained in it being three times as much as is often found
in a 1d. packet. If the whole of the large packet, containing say
2 per cent. of available carbon dioxide were used it would produce
the same effect as if a packet one-third the size containing 6 per cent.
(which would be passed as genuine by the Public Analyst) had been
used, therefore there was no prejudice to the purchaser.
The Defendant's plea and the fact that there was no legal standard
for baking powder prevailed with the Magistrate who dismissed
the case and mulcted the Council in two guineas costs.
The Committee would point out that on several occasions
packets as large as the above have been purchased which contained
over 6 per cent. of available carbon dioxide, and they submit that
if the argument of the Defence in the case under consideration be
pushed to its extreme limits the result becomes reductio ad absurdum
and it may happen that to obtain the ends for which the baking
powder is used, the housewife would have to use the powder in such
large proportion that the loaf or cake for which the powder is used
would be virtually composed of powder.