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277
[1908
purchaser of the nature of the article they have sold. In 11 States the purchaser
must be furnished with a prescribed printed notice. In 17 States the proprietors
of hotels in which it is used must display a prescribed poster. In 10
States the proprietors of hotels using it must inform their guests of the fact.
In 2 States the proprietors must mark the dish in a prescribed manner. In 4
States bakers who use it must display a prescribed placard. And finally, in I
State food containing margarine must be labelled in a prescribed manner.
It will thus be seen that very strong measures are adopted in the United
States to prevent fraudulent dealing in this article. There is no objection to
margarine as an article of food, indeed, it is a good food, but clearly when a
substance which can be purchased in the ordinary way from 4d. to 8d. per pound
is sold to a customer at 1s. and 1s. 2d. per pound, the legislature should do
something to protect the purchaser. There is at present a Bill before Parliament
dealing with this matter, but as it is a private measure, it is possible that it may not
pass; but whether it does or not, the time cannot be far distant when the Government
will be compelled in the interests of honest trading to pass a measure
containing more stringent powers than the law at present provides.
The earmarking or denaturation of margarine, that is to say, the addition
of some substance which can be easily detected by analysts to enable them to
tell with certainty the amount of it which has been mixed as an adulterant with
butter is ordained in several foreign countries. This is of course all to the
good, but does not enablethe public to know at sight when margarine is substituted
for butter, a practice which is now much more common than formerly.
This change has arisen partly because butter and margarine factories are now,
under the provisions of the Butter and Margarine Act of 1907, registered and
are open to official inspection, and therefore the fraudulent addition of margarine
to butter to any large extent is difficult; and chiefly because the substitution
of other fats, even more difficult to detect, has superseded its use.
An objection, which is not, however, a strong one, to the practice of earmarking
is made by some persons on the ground that it is wrong in principle
to adulterate a pure article by the addition of another substance, even though
it is absolutely harmless, and also that if one trade requires protection in this
way others will demand it also. People, however, who argue in this way
forget that it is not the trades which require protection so much as the public,
who are getting more and more, and in several directions, notably in that of
jams, into the hands of the manufacturers, who, having succeeded in passing
off their fraudulent goods on an unsuspecting public for a number of years,
successfully plead "the custom of the trade" when they are at last brought to
book by the Sanitary Authorities for adulteration.
In seven countries the denaturation of margarine is compulsory, namely,
in Germany, since 1897; in Belgium, since 1900; in Austria and Hungary,