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48
to contain any thing more than what might be
regarded as an accidental adulteration. The substances
found in the pepper, which were never found
in pepper corns, were minute quantities of starch,
the spiral vessels and ligneous fibre of other plants.
The reason of the purity of pepper is undoubtedly
the fact that it pays a duty to Government, and
the Board of Inland Revenue have therefore an
interest in looking after it. As a body of skilful
analysts few men exceed the staff at Somerset
House where all our custom house officers get a
better education in the detection of adulterations
than that attainable by most of the food analysts
under the Adulteration of Food Act.
I would suggest that it would not be a difficult
piece of legislation to make a small charge on all
articles of food likely to be adulterated delivered by the
manufacturer to the retail vendor in order to pay
the expense of maintaining a class of educated
officers who should be empowered to examine from
time to time such special articles. This would save
the annoyance and injustice of fining tradesmen
for adulteration of foods of whose qualities they are
perfectly innocent. Under the present law half the
convictions at least have fallen upon parties innocent
of the adulteration of the articles they sell.
Beer.
One specimen alone of beer has been examined,
and this was suspected to contain strychnine.
Some years ago a French chemist expressed a