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51
tion, the Council decided that in the interest of hygiene, street trading of
foodstuffs should be controlled.
Any of such activities as these as lead to improvement in any way in
the way foodstuffs are handled, are desirable if only on; esthetic grounds.
It is not suggested that the unsatisfactory conveyance of meat from
wholesaler to retailer necessarily causes illness or disease in the consumers
of the meat. But practices as dirty as these should be condemned,
even though they cause no ill-effects. Probably much of the activity of
the many local authorities in this question of food hygiene is aimed at
faults which are not necessarily disease producing. Control of food
poisoning as such can be achieved by measures conducted on a much
narrower basis. About one-half of all food poisoning outbreaks are due
to processed or made-up meat such as pies, stews, rissoles, etc. For
control of much of the food poisoning, then, attention should be focused
on the preparation and handling of such processed and made-up meat.
However desirable it might be that everything should be done to attain
decent standards of the handling of food, this work should not be carried
out at the expense of those steps necessary to prevent the poisoning of
food.