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32
SECTION F.
INSPECTION AND SUPERVISION OF FOOD.
During the year food premises were subject to routine and
specialised inspection and a total of two thousand three hundred
and twenty-one visits were made, as shown in Table III in the
Appendix.
Nearly four hundred of these visits were made in connection
with the Council's Clean Food Byelaws which were brought
into operation on the 24th July, 1950. On the whole the premises
were found to be satisfactory and where additional facilities
were required such as constant hot water, towels and soap, etc.,
little difficulty was found in persuading the shop-keepers to make
the necessary provision. On the other hand the standard of
handling food in a cleanly manner and the standard of protection
given to it against contamination, with a few notable
exceptions, was by no means high. This is a major problem
which cannot be dealt with by the visiting district inspector in
the limited time that he can afford to spend in each shop and
the solution lies in the education of food handlers in the
elementary principles of personal and environmental hygiene.
In Section J, under the heading of Health Education, it will
be seen that an attempt has been made to sustain the interest of
food handlers in this important subject, but I cannot help feeling
that the real solution lies in the teaching of these principles in
the schoolroom. Bad habits formed through ignorance, and
practised for ten to twenty years or more are not easily broken
but good habits learnt in childhood become automatic. Children
leaving school and taking up employment in food premises
would automatically apply the safeguards learned in their early
teaching and, becoming part of the purchasing public, would
be ever demanding the highest standards of their teaching.
Food and Drugs Act, 1938.
One hundred and ninety-one samples of food and drugs were
taken for analysis under the above Act, thirty-seven samples
being formal. A further one hundred and fifty-four samples
were taken for bacteriological and pathological examination and
other special tests. Table VII in the Appendix gives details of
these samples submitted for examination.
Five samples (all informal) were found to be inferior or
adulterated and the following table gives a precis of the
Analyst's reports and a brief description of the action taken.