View report page

55
few in the aggregate, but also that by appropriate treatment of the
cows they could be practically reduced to vanishing point. Indeed,
such a result has been obtained in Denmark, where 50 years ago the
general condition of the cows was as wretched as that of any in
northern Europe, but now by modern and rational methods of dairy
procedure butter of a high and uniform quality is manufactured.
The essential points to be remembered, then, are that the samples
of natural butters giving exceptionally low figures when tested for
volatile acids are comparatively very few in number, that the causes
producing these low figures are well-known and are remediable, that
the vast majority of butters give relatively high figures, a fact wellknown
to the scientific adulterator, who not only can, but does, avail
himself of the opportunity thus offered of adding small quantities of
foreign fat to butter with full assurance that his malpractices,
although they may be suspected, will not be officially detected by the
Public Analyst. It was admitted by the Dutch representatives that
it was a matter of common knowledge in Holland that butter from
Brabant, where the majority of margarine factories are, has been
adulterated for years, and that butter is sold from Friesland to be
taken to Brabant for the purpose of being mixed with margarine and
shipped to this country as butter."
The Sale of Food and Drugs Act was passed in 1875 for the
express purpose of preventing such abuses as the above. At that time
adulteration was chiefly of the rough and ready kind—not as in these
days carried out with the aid of modern machinery by skilled chemists.
Also at that time Siberian butter was practically unknown in the
English market, though of recent years, since about 1897, the imports
ation of butter from Siberia has increased enormously. It cannot be
questioned that in 1875, before attention could be directed to these
abnormal foreign butters, the standard of average butter sold in
England was higher in volatile acids than at present. In other words,
where butter was asked for the purchaser expected to get an article of
the nature, substance and quality of average English butter, and