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7
to district sanitary inspection. Thus, the supervision of food and
food premises suffered in that only one inspector was engaged
on such duties as sampling and inspections following applications
for the registration of food premises, etc., an arrangement which
it was unfortunately necessary to continue during the early
months of the year under review.
It is now time for the whole question of the protection of
food from contamination to be dealt with on far more thorough
lines. For instance, the manner in which ice cream and any food
eaten unwashed, such as potato crisps, is manufactured and purveyed
to the public should receive the most careful consideration.
A valuable article entitled "Food Hygiene," written by Dr.
W. A. Lethem, of the Ministry of Health, appeared in the
Monthly Bulletin of the Ministry of Health for March, 1947, and
can be read on page 44 of this report.
The ice cream trade, in particular, causes much uneasiness
among public health authorities and has been the subject of considerable
correspondence between the Metropolitan Boroughs'
Standing Joint Committee and the Ministry of Health. Some of
this correspondence is reproduced on page 37.
The Ice Cream (Heat Treatment, etc.) Regulations, 1947,
state "ice cream shall be protected from dirt, dust or other
contamination at all times during its manufacture, storage and
distribution." Yet the sale of ice cream from premises associated
with the sale of many articles which would have been forbidden
from a dairy is quite common and the highly questionable
assumption that there is safety in wrapping ice cream has
resulted in its sale in connection with such trades as greengrocery
and, consequently, by persons with filthy hands.
The view, possibly held by most people, that there is substantial
protection in the sale of ice cream in tubs or wrapped,
is misleading, for ice cream should not be considered to any
reasonable degree as safe as the packets of food or bottles of milk
which justify the relaxation of the standard of cleanliness that
Section 13 of the Food and Drugs Act, 1938, endeavours to enforce,
and anyone who watches children eating ice cream from packets
or tubs and afterwards licking the paper on tub and their
fingers will realise that there is an essential difference between
the consumption of bottled milk and wrapped or tubbed ice cream.
There is no real safety comparison between the sale of bottled
milk and ice cream eaten from tubs and paper wrappings.