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16
It is a matter for at any rate personal regret that under the
Food & Drugs (Milk & Dairies) Act, 1944, we will lose a considerable
amount of our present power of farm control. If, however,
and only time will provide the answer, such part of our present
functions as we are to lose'can be more effectively carried out by the
Authority to which they are transferred, then the changes will be
a matter"for satisfaction. A loss of local control is never necessarily
prejudicial, a loss of local interest can never fail to be.
Ice Cream.
Ice cream manufacturers find vendors are required to be registered
by the local Council under Section 158 of the Essex County
Council Act, 1933, which was adopted by the Council by resolution
on 20th February, 1934, and came into force three months later.
During the year 1946, 32 applications for registration were
granted (7 manufacturers and 25 vendors).
At the end of the year, 27 persons were registered as manufacturers
and 103 as vendors in the District.
This commodity—in certain instances it has unfortunately very
limited claims to being regarded as food—has been very clearly
brought into the limelight as a potential danger.
It might be reasonably argued that so long as a product has
the degree of demand from the public associated with ice cream, and
is apparently from its very appearance, pure, then so long will it
be difficult to bring home to the public the necessity for insisting
upon its being raised to and maintained at the highest possible
degree of purity. Psychologically white is associated with cleanliness,
and ice cream is no exception to this rule.
The absence of a definite standard of satisfaction necessarily
precludes the possibility of dealing with sub-standard samples on a
properly effective basis. It must in common justice be said that
where unsatisfactory samples have been ascertained locally the producers,
when in our area, have proved fully co-operative in the
taking of what suggested themselves as necessary measures of improvement,
and doubtless the same can be said of the vast mapority
of producers anywhere.
It is, one is sure, regretted by most manufacturers as by everyone
else, that present conditions do not permit the production of
ice cream which does have a very satisfactory food value, and again
only time can provide the solution. Cleanliness, if not calories, can
be our immediate objective,