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32
premises, equipment and methods could be improved to qualify for the Guild's
certificate of membership.
Yet much remains to be done in the general field of education to teach
every man, woman and child capable of understanding the problem, that food
poisoning is preventable. Mothers are taught the hygiene of breast-feeding
and infant feeding but there after It would appear the child is left to
wander through what remains of the 'Seven ages of man', and at any stage to
fall a prey to the ravages of dysentery and other serious germ-transmitted
disorders. He receives no clear teaching on how to defend himself against
the host of predatory bacteria seeking to invade his unguarded portals,
enter his system and work, havoc and destruction,,
The child must be taught, first, by precept and example, the need for
personal cleanliness, to wash the hands after using the W.C. and how to
prevent contamination of food by dabbling fingers, use of the handkerchief,
and controlled coughing and sneesing. In school these lessons will be
amplified and the social duty to neighbours and the community inculcated.,
Here, the part played by rats and mice, domestic animals, dirt, dust and
flies can be learnt and the application of individual hygiene to community
health studied and absorbed.
The subject of domestic science, so interesting to boys and girls
alike at school, should properly embrace explicit Instruction on how food
poisoning germs multiply in certain prepared foods under appropriate conditions
of temperature and moisture, as well as the hazards to health of
faulty techniques in washing up".
School hygiene should rival that of the home as the standard for
individuals to aim at, and both should strive to build up an educated
public, whose members will not accept anything but clean food from shops,
restaurants and canteens.
It follows that the lessons learnt throughout the formative years will
be taken into the food factories, food-handling shops, eating houses and
canteens, by the food handlers themselves, so that the hygienic circle of
contact involving producer - conveyor - handler - and consumer - will be
complete and the housewife and her family surely protected from contaminated
foods.
The Food Hygiene Guild has made a year of steady progress in approving
140 tradesmen out of 238 who applied for certificates of membership.
It is apparent that we are gearing our educational machine in reverse
by Instructing adult food handlers and others who should already have
learnt to apply the lessons of food hygiene in the formative years; but
so urgent is the problem that we cannot wait on ideal procedures, but must
use all possible means to achieve the desired end.
Enough has been said to emphasize that Acts of Parliament and the
vigilance of the Sanitary Section of the Health Department are powerless
alone to reduce the problem of food poisoning to vanishing point.
An educated co-operative public is an imperative necessity, to bring
a blaze of light, knowledge and vigour, where obscurity, ignorance and
slothfullness now foster dirt, and breed disease.
FACTORIES ACTS, 1937 and 1948.
In accordance with the Factories Act, 1937, and at the request of the
Minister of Labour and National Service, the following information is
included in this report, (See Table 11).