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18
Two samples of sausage rolls contained respectively 15.5 and 8.5 per cent. of meat only. Your
analyst is of the opinion that sausage rolls must contain not less than 20 per cent. of meat. Some
sausages in a cellophane wrapper were badly contaminated with a growth of Aspergillus glaucus
mould and also of yeast on the surface.
The active ingredients only of a sample of liver pills were declared as though they were the total
constituents thus contravening the Pharmacy and Medicines Act.
Several samples of homoeopathic preparations were examined and the claims made for them
were considered to be misleading. The declarations of ingredients were given according to
homoeopathic nomenclature and system, but claims were made for food supplements which were
not present in the quantities necessary for the claims. The declaration of the mineral constituents
was not in accordance with the requirements of the Labelling of Food Order.
New Food Legislation.
The year 1958 probably witnessed less fresh legislation for food and drug administration than
any year since the outbreak of the 1939 war.
The Public Health (Preservatives, etc., in Food) Regulations.
The most important changes affected the Preservatives Regulations. The Public Health
(Preservatives, etc., in Food) (Amendment) Regulations, 1958, and The Public Health(Preservatives,
etc., in Food) (Amendment No. 2) Regulations, 1958, permit the treatment of certain fruit with
anti-mould agents. Fruit has for long caused trouble owing to its perishable nature and consequent
attack by moulds between collection and consumption. With greater dependence on foreign imports
and with the food laws of other countries permitting what are considered to be harmless quantities
of preservatives on the skins of fruits this country has been more or less forced to come into line.
As a result the fruit named below may now contain the following preservatives:—
Citrus fruits—
Diphenyl not more than 100 parts per million
or Orthophenylphenol not more than 70 parts per million or
proportionate quantities of the two
together.
Orthophenylphenol in Apples, Pears
and Pineapples not more than 10 parts per million
Peaches not more than 20 parts per million
Melons not more than 125 parts per million.
and foods made with any of these fruits may contain proportionate quantities of these permitted
preservatives, except that foods containing melon may not contain more than 10 parts of
orthophenylphenol for every million parts of melon in the food. It is difficult to understand why
melons are permitted to be treated with 125 parts per million of orthophenylphenol. The skin of
melons, like that of the related squash families, is hard, and therefore more resistant to attack than
that of many other fruits, but the melon is a very juicy fruit and many consumers of melon are apt
to spoon up the juice from their plates, thereby consuming a large proportion of the preservative.
It does not seem to have been realised, moreover, that the area of the skin of a fruit is proportional
to the square of the radius, whereas the weight, or volume, is more or less proportional to the cube
of the radius, so that the larger the fruit the less should be the quantity of preservative in parts
per million required to cover the area of the skin.
The Anti-oxidant in Food Regulations, 1958.
These regulations provide for the sale and importation of certain foods, which contain propyl,
octyl, and dodecyl gallates, butylated hydroxyanisole and butylated hydroxytoluene within
certain limits. Essentially these regulations permit the addition of these compounds to anhydrous
edible oils and fats, to vitamin oils and concentrates, to butter for manufacturing purposes, and
to essential oils and their flavouring constituents. Since ingredients are allowed to contain
anti-oxidants provision is made for the resultant foods to do so. With our present knowledge it is
extremely difficult to determine the quantity of anti-oxidants in oils and the difficulty of doing so
in prepared foods is much greater. There has been a considerable amount of discussion as to whether
legislation should or should not be enacted before it is capable of being fully implemented, but if
one were always to adopt the practice that legal requirements must follow the development of
scientific knowledge to enable their ready enforcement, food laws would lag even further behind
than they do at the present time. It is generally found that science manages to catch up with
legislation and public analysts owe much to the willing help received from their colleagues in
industrial laboratories for information on some of these delicate matters.