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15
in those cases where a glazed window had not been provided by
the retailers, a letter was issued to the retailers calling on them
to comply with the regulation of the Ministry as to covering the
meat with muslin. At the present time the retailers in the town
have been given a certain length of time to comply with these
instructions. While the meat regulations mark an advance in
the obtaining of clean food, it must be at once recognised that they
are limited in scope. The Ministry of Health circular specifically
states that the regulations do not apply to rabbits, poultry, fish,
cooked meat or sausages—although it is equally obvious that
such articles of food require at least as much care in preventing
contamination from dust and dirt as do uncooked butchers' meat,
bacon and ham.
It is true that Section 72 of the Public Health Act, 1925,
extends the Public Health (Meat) Regulations to some extent to all
foods, but a number of trades are exempt from it by
reason of falling under Sub-Section 1 of the Factory and
Workshop Act, 1901. More specific and detailed explanation
of the Meat Regulations by the Ministry of Health,
if any such explanations were to be given at all, might
have saved Local Authorities a good deal of trouble. It
is astonishing now that the Ministry of Health has dealt with
such food commodities as milk and meat, that the conditions
under which bread is conveyed are still not subject to any legal
restriction. Loaves of bread are handled by varying persons of
varying degrees of cleanliness, carried in baskets on the heads of
errand boys, stocked on the floor of shopsi or bakers' vans, and
then eaten by the public, generally without any further cooking.
The only solution to prevent such conditions of affairs is that
bread should be wrapped in hygienic waxed paper. Machinery is
now on the market which enables large numbers of loaves of
bread to be automatically wrapped without handling, and sooner
or later it is to be hoped that bakers will be required in all cases
to provide against the contamination of bread by some such means
as this.
During the year the appointment of an additional Sanitary
Inspector in 1924 enabled progress to be made with the inspection
of houses under the Housing and Town Planning Act, and 250
houses in 7 streets were inspected under this Act with the result
that 114 notices were served on the owners of the property concerned.
The housing difficulty in Ilford has not been eased. It will
be seen from the report that no less than 2,361 houses were completed
during 1925, or were in course of erection on the last day