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1922] 50
INSPECTION AND EXAMINATION OF FOOD AND PLACES WHERE
FOOD IS PREPARED.
Sale of Unsound Fruit by Street Traders.—It is by no means unusual for
wholesale dealers to sell quantities of packages of fruit at from 25 per cent. to 75 per cent.
below the prevailing price of sound goods. Costermongcrs seek the aid of the Public Health
Department with a view to obtaining the refund of money paid by asserting that they bought
the goods which have not turned out according to samples shown. These goods they desire to
surrender as unfit for human consumption. In such a case a surrender note is given on the
deposit of the unsound foods with us. This note is then taken back to the wholesale dealer,
who, as a rule, accepts it, and refunds the money. Occasionally the wholesale dealer demurs
and asserts that the goods were sold with all faults, the purchaser taking the risk, but this
is rare, as apparently they do not care to face County Court proceedings, when the Inspector
granting the surrender note would be subpoenaed.
There being thus a regular traffic in fruit which should be unsaleable, there is always a
danger of unsound goods being palmed off with sound fruit, both from the rear portions of
the piles of fruit on fruit stalls and barrows and the smaller fruit shop stands.
The purchase of such parcels, as has been referred to, from the wholesaler is of a very
speculative nature, but on the whole the transactions would appear to satisfy the particular
class of dealer, as, generally speaking, there is a fairly keen competition. It is only when
the percentage of bad fruit is excessive that the aid of the Inspector is sought. When a
request is made it is necessary that all the fruit should be carefully sorted, and only the
unsound reserved for destruction. In some cases the whole may be too bad to justify any
attempt at sorting.
Cases are not unknown where the costermonger tries to steal a march on the inspector
—who has left him for a time to sort out the goods—by submitting at the finish a number of
boxes of alleged unsound fruit, and it is necessary to make sure that the cases are not filled
up chiefly with packing, with some fruit distributed in it.
Such requests entail a lot of careful supervision and extra work for the Food Inspector,
and there is always a considerable risk of leakage of unsound fruit. Quite recently a
costermonger was detected in Islington through an Inspector's attention being directed to
some unsound fruit in a house being visited in the ordinary course of the Sanitary Inspector's
duties. From the description given the particular barrow was with some considerable
difficulty traced and the person in charge alleged that he was only temporarily in charge, and
did not know the proper owner's name. The proper owner eventually turned out to be his
own brother.
It is thus easily seen that the tracing of unsound fruit and the taking of proceedings
against the particular class who deal in the cheap packages disposed of by the wholesaler
involves much detective inspection, and, owing to the false statements made, a great deal of
enquiry and verification on the part of the Inspector has to be made, the end result being
frequently a very inadequate fine.
All this could be avoided if there were sufficient protection against the sale of such fruit
without sorting by the wholesaler.
The difficulty is not confined to fruit, for quite recently damaged and blown tinned goods
have been similarly distributed in Islington by a wholesale dealer to small obscure shops at
a ridiculously small sum, and the shopkeeper enticed by the possible profit to dispose of what
should be unsaleable. On tracing the wholesale dealer he has replied that the goods were
sold on the condition that they were sorted.