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Butter with animal fat, or any compound of Butter and animal or
vegetable oil. It provides, under a severe penalty for default,
for the distinct branding, by all importers, manufacturers, or
sellers, of the word 'Margarine,' in letters not less than one inch
in length, on all packages of this butter substitute, and for the
Registration by the Clerk to the Union of all manufactories of
Margarine in the United Kingdom, and for these manufactories to
be accessible for inspection by the Inspectors under the Sale of
Food and Drugs Act.
"The Bill further provides under heavy penalties, for the
invoicing of Oleo-Margarine as such, by manufacturers and wholesale
dealers, and for information to be given to purchasers byretail
dealers in this article, as to what they are buying, and for
proceedings to be taken under Sections 20 to 28 of the Sale of
Food and Drugs Act, 1875.
"There can be no doubt that fraud is practised when ' Butterine
' is sold as Butter. But Butterine, honestly made, with all
proper care, and free from unwholesome ingredients, is probably a
more wholesome article of food than some samples of Butter that
find their way into the market. Here again, however, the public
are fully entitled to know what it is that they are buying, and the
sale of Butterine as Butter should be punishable by a severe
penalty. The substitution of the words ' Margarine' or ' OleoMargarine
' would probably do something to check the sale of
Butter-substitutes as Butter, if under the penalties of the " Sale
of Food and Drugs Act" the seller was compelled to mark every
packet or parcel with those words, as provided in the proposed
measure. At the same time, it should be remembered, in this
connection, that the sale of mixtures in place, and under the name
of the pure article, has not been very greatly checked by the provisions
of the Sale of Food and Drugs Act, which make it incumbent
upon the seller to affix a notice to each package to the
effect that the article is a mixture.
"We feel that precautions should be taken, by supervision
during the process of manufacture, to ensure the use of perfectly
sound and wholesome fats in the production of Butter-substitutes.