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54
there ought to be costs, and nothing that I can give will cover the
expenses the defence have been put to. Eventually his worship
granted £20 costs.
As reported, the case would appear to resolve itself into this:
that the defendant was charged with selling butter adulterated with
foreign fat, and that he proved to the satisfaction of the Court that he
sold a genuine Siberian butter, to which no foreign fat had been
added. The summons, however, charged the defendant with selling
"to the prejudice of the purchaser butter not of the nature substance
and quality demanded," and the point which the prosecution desired
to maintain was that the purchaser (being a member of the public)
was prejudiced in this case, whether the butter were genuine Siberian
butter or not. The question is intimately involved in the methods and
procedure of chemical analysis, and the inadequate tests which are at
present available to Public Analysts in the examination of butter
adulterated with small quantities of fat other than butter fat. In
1902 a Departmental Committee investigated the subject of butter
analysis, and after hearing numerous chemical experts, Public Analysts
and others, found that "All tests hitherto devised, whilst serving to
distinguish with absolute certainty between butter and commercial
margarine, break down to a greater or less extent when applied to
the discovery of small quantities of foreign fat in butter—that is
quantities such as 5, 10, or 15 per cent. When cows are exposed to
wet and cold winds the proportion of the volatile acids is sensibly
diminished, but when the weather becomes milder or the cows are
housed, the amount of these acids—which are the characteristic acids
of butter as distinguished from other animal fats—usually becomes
normal."
Butter coming from Siberia shows the greatest variation in this
respect, but after obtaining information from all countries supplying
butter to the United Kingdom, and hearing evidence as to the
percentage of butters giving these low variations in volatile acids,
the Committee found that not only were the numbers of such samples