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108
ANALYST'S REPORT,
To the Wandsworth Board of Works.
Gentlemen,
It having become customary for me to annually supplement
the dry figures of my official quarterly reports by a
few remarks on the state of the food supply of the district,
and on the working of the sale of Food and Drugs Act therein,
I beg this year to be permitted to refer briefly to one or two
points upon which it is desirable that those members of the
public who take an interest in their local affairs, should have
a clear understanding before they proceed to criticise the
action of their representatives. I have found that persons
who speak generally upon food without such understanding,
usually repeat one of two hackneyed complaints, and I therefore
propose to take these seriatim, and to show some of the
difficulties which beset the present state of the law:—
(1), It is said "our local officers favor the publicans, because
they never find bad beer, while the Excise officers do continually,"
This is simply because the law has placed the
excise chemist in a position enabling him to detect the addition
of sugar and water to beer, which is denied to the
public analyst. An exciseman has the power of entry into
a publican's cellars and can take what samples he pleases.
He therefore takes a sample from the cask under draught, and at
the same time, he takes one from an untouched eask of the same
delivery, In this way he supplies his analyst with specimens
of the beerasitcomes in and as it goes out, and then avery simple
research enables the chemist to say whether or not water or
sugar has been added. The local Inspector of food has no
such power; he can only buy over the counter and, there
being no legal definition of the word "beer" nor any standards
of strength for such articles, it follows that all a public
aualyst can do is simply to see that the beverage is