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112
Margarine Prosecutions.—At the Clerkenwell Police Court on Thursday,
11th May, 1911, eight summonses were heard by Mr. Bros. for selling
margarine as Irish butter. The proceedings were under the Sale of Food and
Drugs Acts, and were taken by the Council at the instance of the Earl of
Carrick, Inspector of Irish Interests in Great Britain, on behalf of the Irish
Department of Agriculture, whose temporary resident Assistants acted as
agents for the Council's Inspectors in purchasing the samples.
For the prosecution it was stated that the reputation of Irish butter had
suffered from the practice of certain dealers in selling margarine as a substitute
for the article demanded ; that the margarine sold now-a-days was not as good
as of old, as it was composed of vegetable oils instead of animal fat, and that
at Is. a pound, at which price Irish butter was to be obtained, margarine of
the value of 5d. was sold.
At the Marylebone Po'ice Court on Friday, the 19t,h May, 1911, six
summonses were heard by Mr. Plowden for selling margarine as butter.
These proceedings were also taken by the Council, and the method of sampling
was the same as in the preceding cases.
All these samples were taken by the Food Inspectors of the St. Pancras
Borough Council, operating in conjunction with special Inspectors of the Irish
Board of Agriculture, for the purpose of cheeking a custom, which was
considerably increasing, of serving customers with margarine when butter was
asked for. These special Inspectors had paid regular visits to shops in St.
Pancras, and were looked upon as regular customers. At first they were
supplied with butter when they asked for it, but when they came to be looked
upon as tegular customers they were served with margarine. The result was
that in St. Pancras alone, out of sixteen shops sampled, fourteen were found to
have served margarine instead of butter.
The summonses were issued under Section 6 of the Sale of Food and Drugs
Act, 1875, which provides that no person shall sell to the prejudice of the
purchaser any article of food which is not of the nature, substance, and quality
of the article demanded, under a penalty not exceeding £20. By Section 17,
Sub-Section 1, of the Sale of Food and Drugs Act, 1899, the penalty upon a
second conviction may be increased to £50, and upon any subsequent conviction
to £100. By Sub-Section 2, where a person guilty of an offence is liable to
a fine exceeding £50, and the offence, in the opinion of the Court, was
committed by the personal act, default, or culpable negligence of the person
accused, that person shall be liable (if the Court is of opinion that a fine will
not meet the circumstances of the case) to imprisonment, with or without hard
labour, for a period not exceeding three months.
Notwithstanding these provisions and the fact that several of the defendants
had been previously convicted (in one case three times, in another ease twice),
the Magistrates only imposed a penalty of 40s. and 12s 6d. costs in each case.
Having regard to the inadequate penalties imposed, your Committee, with the
concurrence of the Council, placed the whole of the facts before the Home
Secretary, the President of the Local Government Board, and the President of
the Board of Agriculture.