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§ 3. ADULTERATED FOOD.
BOARD OF AGRICULTURE AND FISHERIES (INTELLIGENCE
DIVISION).
Extract from the Annual Report for 1904.
Adulteration in Transit.—The agricultural view of the Sections in the Sale
of Food and Drugs Acts which relate to warranty, has been expressed in
numerous communications both from individuals and associations, insisting that
farmers are unduly exposed to the risk of a prosecution under these Sections.
Milk sent with a warranty to a distant town may be adulterated by some
person after it leaves the possession of the farmer, and if the milkman, on being
summoned, produces the warranty and proves to the satisfaction of the Court
that he is not responsible for the adulteration, the farmer thereupon becomes
liable to prosecution.
The chief risk is that the milk may be adulterated by some of the numerous
carmen, roundsmen and others through whose hands it passes after arrival at
the receiving station, but it may also happen that the milk is tampered with
at some point on the journey.
An instance of the latter risk was brought under the notice of the Board this
year. A farmer residing in Bedfordshire, and sending milk to Tottenham Station,
via Kentish Town Station, was summoned on the 7th January, 1904, under
the Sale of Food and Drugs Acts for selling milk adulterated with 36 per cent,
of water, and fined £9. It was proved in Court that the milk was left standing
on the platform at Kentish Town Station, where it changed trains, for about
an hour. About three months later a porter was detected at Kentish Town
Station removing milk from a churn and adding water, and was sentenced to
six weeks imprisonment. The grounds for supposing that the farmer had
been wrongfully convicted were so strong that the Home Office directed the
fine to be reduced by £8.