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24
FOOD HYGIENE.
A Clean Food Campaign in the Borough was inaugurated by
the holding of a Clean Food Exhibition in the Ealing Town Hall
from 26th September to 1st October.
The Exhibition was opened by His Worship the Mayor of
Ealing (Alderman H. C. Rash, J.P.) supported by Councillor
S. Allenby, representing the Public Health Committee.
The Exhibition was open to the public for five and a half days
and attracted an attendance of 8,000. This number included
representatives from the Ministries of Health, Food and Agriculture
& Fisheries; Members and Officers of many Local Authorities ;
Members of the British Medical Association and other Professional
Organisations; representatives from the Food Trade Organisations
in Ealing and surrounding districts; Members of the Women's
Organisations in Ealing and about 500 senior girls from the Ealing
Schools who were conducted round the Exhibition in small organised
parties by the Sanitary Inspectors. In view of the technical
nature of the Exhibition, children under 14 years of age were not
admitted unless accompanied by an adult.
A representative from the B.B.C. visited the Exhibition and
broadcast the following impressions in "Women's Hour" on the
27th September :
"This business of dirty food isn't a pleasant subject and
the Public Health Committee of Ealing, in putting on this
exhibition, haven't at all gone out of their way to disguise its
unpleasantness. There's a model, for example, of a provision
shop—the wrong kind of provision shop. Behind the counter
is a wax dummy of a woman assistant. She wears a grimy
overall; greasy, tousled hair tumbles down over her face;
one finger is wrapped in a dirty bandage; uncovered sausages
and pies and other foodstuffs are Uttered about the dusty
counter ; and it's just as well the assistant is a dummy, because
on the floor on the other side of the counter from her, in between
some open sacks of groceries, is a large rat. It's a stuffed rat,
as it happens, but just in case you think that's a sign of squeamishness—there's
a glass case around the corner showing a section
of a sewer, and inside that is a real live rat. Then there are live
mice and dead rabbits and doomed cockroaches and things—all
there not for their horrific value but to show the public how
and by what agents food can become poisoned.
There's a fly's eye view of the dinner-table targets presented
to the ever-hungry fly on the ceiling—the fly that would be
thwarted if the food dishes were covered. The exhibition's
cleverly devised lessons are as simple as that. The organisers