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288
19101
During the year 20 of the chief grocers in Islington were informally
sampled, and cut of this number it was found that only one sold margarine
in an unstamped wrapper. The man was prosecuted for a similar offence last
year. It will thus be seen that the practice of selling margarine in unstamped
wrappers is practically confined to the lower class tradesman, or businesses for
the most part confined to the lower class of the community.
Forty samples of cheese were examined, all of which were reported as
genuine.
A letter from the Borough Council of Battersea, on which I was desired to
comment, was considered by the Public Health Committee, to whom I submitted
the folowing report:—
To the Chairman and Members of the
Public Health Committee.
Gentlemen,
Standards for Cheese, Etc.
I am in entire agreement with the recommendations contained in the
letter from the Borough Council of Battersea that the Local Government
Board should fix a standard for cheese, which is not only one of the most
ancient foods (for I believe it was known as long ago as the days of King
David, and that the Greeks were acquainted with it long before the birth of
Christ), but also one of the most nourishing and largely used. Its
standardisation is all the more necessary because, as competition increases,
the tendency is to put cheeses on the market with less fat, or in other
words to make them from milk which has been largely deprived of its
butter fat; so that ultimately we shall be told that such a cheese is genuine
because it has been known and sold by the trade for years, and therefore
a prosecution must fail.
In the United States cheese is defined in Circular 19 of the Office of
the Secretary of the United States Department of Agriculture as " the
sound, solid, and ripened product made from milk or cheese by coagulating
the casein thereof with rennet or lactic acid, with or without the addition
of ripening ferments and seasoning, and contains, in the water free substance,
not less than 50 per cent. of milk fat."