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277
[1912
matter of regret to me that we do not possess any power by which we can
institute legal proceedings for such an omission.
It is difficult to convince persons who are registered for the sale of
milk, more particularly as the conditions to which I have previously
referred with regard to those milkshops where paraffin oil, etc., is sold
still prevail, that the utmost care should be exercised in the sale of milk.
I am,
Yours faithfully,
JAMES R. LEGGATT.
Superintendent and Chief Sanitary Inspector.
ADULTERATION OF FOOD AND DRUGS.
Samples analysed in 1912.—The total number of samples submitted
to the Public Analyst was 1,207, of which 1,100 were declared to be genuine,
and 97 adulterated. The percentage of adulteration was, therefore, 8 0.
Of late years the Medical Officer of Health has felt it his duty to point
out that the detection of adulteration has yearly become more difficult. He
has now to report that last year was no different to its immediate predecessors.
At one time adulteration, in the opinion of a certain school of politicians, was
looked on as a form of trade competition, and that its prevention was entirely
a matter for those who bought the goods. To-day, however, this is happily
not the case. On the contrary it is looked on as a grave offence; that is to
say, that the ordinary gross adulteration is so considered. When, however,
the finer arts of the sophisticator are brought to bear and the added substances
are said to be there only for the purpose of "improving" the article, then,
indeed, the adulteration is winked at, if not encouraged, by the courts. For
years similar practices had obtained widely in the United States; but things
are not now what they were. Indeed, any person who has watched the passage
of the Pure Food Bill through Congress, and, since then, the enforcement cf
its provisions, cannot have failed to notice that it is causing what is little less
than a revolution in the States. No longer is it possible to sell these
" improved " foods unless there is a proper declaration of the fact attached to
the food; and as a consequence their sales have greatly diminished, while the
demand for genuine articles has largely increased.
In this country for some reason or other there seems to be a reluctance
to deal in a drastic manner with this question of adulteration; and yet no one