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4. Complaints concerning food quality:-
Canadian Clover Honey — Alleged not Clover Honey
Gateaux — Alleged the filling was artificial cream
Buttered Roll - Contained margarine not butter
Two Buttered Rolls — Contained margarine not butter
Steak and Kidney Pie — Did not contain kidney
5. Insect Contamination:-
Cheese and Tomato Roll - Contained maggot and mould
Corned Beef Sandwich - Contained cockroach
Bread — Contained unidentified insect
Baby Food — Contained dead larvae
Beefburger Roll - Contained Pharaoh's Ants
Sandwich - Contained caterpillar
"Picnic" Bar — Contained maggots
Tinned Tomatoes - Contained caterpillar
Bar of Plain Chocolate - Contained maggots
"Picnic" Bar — Infested by larvae
Sausage Roll - Contained beetle
Fruit Pie - Contained cockroach
6- Rodent Contamination:-
Plain Chocolate - Gnawed by mice
Plain Chocolate - Contamination by mice and insects
The overwhelming majority of complaints concerned foods which were mouldy, stale,
putrefied, beyond their "death" date, or otherwise unfit. Of the total number of investigations
concerning mould or staleness, 55% related to items of prepacked or factory processed foods
containing code indications of their "death" dates. In two instances of complaints concerning
Pizza Pies, there were no indications whatsoever of the dates of manufacture or packaging and
neither the manufacturer nor the retailer could say with any certainty just how stale the articles
were when sold. This haphazard method of manufacture and packing of perishable foods is
deplorable. The present method of using secret or complicated codes on perishable packaged
foods is little better. The sooner standardisation of information in open-date form is a legal
requirement, so much the sooner will the customer be in a position to satisfy himself that perishable
packaged food offered for sale is at least within the recommended period of freshness.
Extraneous objects found in food included cigarette ends, nails, fragments of wood, glass,
a stud, and in one case a "conker" which was discovered in a pint of milk. Most of the metal
objects and glass were found to have been introduced during manufacture and had somehow
eluded the metal detectors and sieves. Manufacturers were very conscious of the serious consequences
of allowing extraneous objects to be passed on to the consumer. In theory it should
not happen and non-metallic objects usually find their way into the food after the sieving and the
grading operations. Metallic objects are usually discovered by the metal detection apparatus.
This apparatus works on a magnetic field principle and is activated by distortion of the field in
the presence of metal objects passing directly through it. Checks on the efficiency of the apparatus
may only be made by deliberately distorting the field; therefore fail safe devices cannot be
effectively used and reliance is placed on manual checks. Until metal detection apparatus with
adequate fail safe devices are employed these metal objects in food from the manufacturing
processes may continue to occur to a considerable degree. During one investigation concerning a
piece of glass in a pork sausage, all the available evidence led to the conclusion that the glass
had been introduced after sale to the customer.
Adulteration complaints mainly concerned added water to milk and to spirits and wine. The
addition of water to spirits is not often encountered nowadays, since this is such a crude method
and there are many more sophisticated and less detectable ways of "fiddling" spirits than by
the addition of water. Court action resulted in a fine.
The monthly incidence of food complaints shows peak periods during the month of June and
December. The mild weather during the year probably contributed considerably to the June peak
and to the rising number of complaints due to larval and maggot infestation during November
and December.
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