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9
During the summer months, when parents are warned of the
danger of poliomyelitis arising from unclean habits in feeding,
children can be seen in dusty streets or on buses and trams eating
ice-cream which has been purchased from vendors who must,
obviously, have experienced very considerable difficulty in washing
their hands after visiting the water-closet. Yet it would seem that
the legal criterion of cleanliness is that of visible rather than invisible
contamination, despite the fact that this latter and usual form
of contamination presents such enormous difficulties in tracking
down the source of infection in cases of enteric outbreaks.
The danger of this invisible contamination can be shown by
reference to a number of instances; for example, a manufacturer
of ice-cream in Hackney, whose premises were constructed according
to the advice he received and who was willing to carry out any
reasonable requirements in order to produce a clean product, and
did, in fact, spend many thousands of pounds in improving the
establishment he had taken over, for some time unfailingly produced
a Grade 1 ice-cream; then, suddenly, several reports were
received from various districts in and outside London stating that
Grade 4 ice-cream was being produced. No possible reason for this
could be found when the shop was visited by the Food Inspector and
myself, but on watching the premises the Inspector noticed that
two of the female staff, after visiting the lavatory, went straight
to work without washing their hands, although there was no possible
excuse for this, since the instructions were strict on the subject and
the girls had to pass the washing accommodation before returning
to work. They were immediately discharged and the ice-cream has
since remained a Grade 1 product. If either of these girls had been
a carrier of typhoid fever she might quite conceivably have caused
a large number of cases of typhoid.
One of the principal difficulties experienced by local authorities
is that of refusing applications for the registration of premises for
the sale of ice-cream in view of the appeal to the courts and the
knowledge that the Magistrate will, in all probability, consider the
application entirely from the point of view of the possibility of gross
contamination and not from the possibility of invisible bacteriological
contamination.
This difficulty is clearly shown by the following extracts from
the shorthand notes of an appeal against the Council's refusal to
register premises for the sale of ice-cream which was heard in the
Magistrates' Court during the year under review. The magistrate,
in this case, would not allow evidence of this potential danger to be
brought forward and stated that he would only allow evidence with
regard to the premises under consideration to be produced. When