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5. LEGAL PROCEEDINGS IN CONNECTION WITH
FOOD. Legal proceedings were necessary in the following
instances:—
A bottle of milk containing a block of wood—defendants fined
£25 0s. 0d. and £2 2s. 0d. costs.
Smoking in food retail shop—defendant fined £5 0s. 0d. and
£2 2s. 0d. costs. An appeal to Quarter Sessions was
dismissed.
Placing of foodstuff, namely poultry, on a tray on the forecourt
so as to involve risk of contamination—defendant fined
£5 0s 0d. and £5 5s. 0d. costs.
In nine other cases of articles of food containing foreign matter
warnings were sent to the manufacturers.
6. DRIED EGG POWDER. An interesting circumstance
occurred during the year occasioned by the use of dried egg powder
in the making of doughnuts. A substantial firm in the Borough has
for many years engaged in preparing doughnut flour, incorporating
in the mixture, pre-pasteurised dried egg imported from America.
The Managing Director (Canadian by nationality) thought he would
prefer to import dried egg prepared in Canada, and ordered a considerable
quantity amounting to 9,000 pounds of the powder from
that source. The examination of samples, however, of this importation,
revealed the presence of Salmonella organisms in the bulk, and
it was necessary to "hold up" this material and some doughnut mix
already prepared with this dried egg, until further investigations had
been made to determine the extent to which the organisms were
distributed throughout the consignment.
Whilst the published results of tests carried out at this time
indicated that Salmonellae do not survive most baking processes,
it is dangerous to have contaminated products in a bakehouse owing
to the possibility of them coming into contact with non-baked
material, e.g., synthetic cream.
Ultimately it was found possible to release all but a small fraction
of the original powder but the events set in train as a consequence
of this incident are likely to be of great benefit to all firms using
dried egg for the preparation of foodstuffs.
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