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FOOD AND DRUGS ACT, 1938.
In its passage through Parliament the Food and Drugs Bill
was amended in so far as the definition of the Food and Drugs
Authority was concerned, in its final form the Act defining the
expression "Food and Drugs Authority" to mean: —
(i) as respects a county borough, and also as respects any
non-county borough or urban district which has according
to the last published census for the time being a
population of forty thousand or upwards, the local
authority; and
(ii) as respects any other area, the county council :
Provided that—
(a) if a county council satisfy the Minister that the
area or areas in respect of which they would be
the Food and Drugs authority would be rendered
inconvenient in size, shape or situation for the
efficient performance of their duties as the Food
and Drugs authority, the Minister may direct that
the county council shall be the Food and Drugs
authority as respects the district or districts of any
one or more of the local authorities who, but for
such a direction would be Food and Drugs authorities
under this Act, but were not such authorities
under the law in force immediately before the commencement
thereof.
The duties of a Food and Drugs authority are easily and
intimately related to the usual day-to-day responsibilities of a
public health department. The attitude of the earlier legislation
that the Food and Drugs Acts were matters for the police
is now forgotten, and the service is rightly treated as a public
health one.
The service is not one necessarily more efficiently and
economically administered by very large areas, for example,
the densely populated area of the Middlesex County Council.
Rather it is considered that it is one of minute detail appropriately
administered by a public health department, the Medical
Officer of Health thus co-ordinating the duties of the Sanitary
Inspectorial staff, so that with the routine day-to-day food control
and inspection of the area may go hand-in-hand all the
appropriate sampling under the Food and Drugs Act.
The reasons given by the Local Government and Public
Health Consolidation Committee for proposing a change in the
Food and Drugs Authorities throughout the country seemed to
be quite clear, and as regards Wembley, very pertinent : —
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