sale of butter substitutes assumed very large proportions, and
so seriously prejudiced dairy-farmers that, as regards these,
an act was passed which was not exactly an amendment of the
Sale of Food and Drugs Act, although it embodied a good many
provisions of that act. It was called the Margarine Act 1887.
It provided that every package of articles made in imitation of
butter should be labelled ``margarine'' in letters 1 1/2 inches
square. The vendor, however, was protected if he could show
a warranty or invoice, whereas in the Sale of Food and Drugs
Act he was not protected by invoice merely. Inspectors might
take samples of ``any butter or substitute purporting to be
butter'' without going through the form of purchase. The
maximum penalty was raised from L. 20 as provided by the Food
Act, to L. 50 in the case of a first and to L. 100 in the case
of repeated conviction. The Margarine Act is the first statute
that makes reference to and sanctions the use of preservatives,
concerning which a good deal will have to be said farther on.
Select committee, 1894.
In the course of twenty years of administration of the Food
Acts so many difficulties had arisen in reference to the
various points referred to, that in 1894 a select committee
was appointed to inquire into the working of the various acts
and to report whether any, and if so what, amendments were
desirable. During three sessions the committee sat and
took voluminous evidence. They reported that where the acts
had been well administered they had been most beneficial in
diminishing adulteration offences. Forms of adulteration
which were common prior to the passing of the 1875 act, such
as the introouction of alum into bread and the colouring of
confectionery with poisonous material, had almost entirely
disappeared. A close connexion had been shown to exist
between the extent of adulteration and the number of articles
submitted for analysis under the acts, the proportion of
adulterated samples being found to diminish as the number of
samples taken relatively to the population increased. Thus, in
1890, in Somersetshire one sample had been analysed for every
379 persons, the percentage of adulterated samples in those
taken for analysis being as low as 3.6; in Gloucestershire
one to 770 persons with 6.2 of adulteration; in Bedfordshire
one to 821 with 7.1; in Derbyshire one to 3164 with 17.1%,
and in Oxford one sample to 14,963 inhabitants with no less
than 41.7% of adulterated samples. The number of samples
of articles annually submitted to analysis, according
to the returns obtained by the Local Government Board,
steadily increased from the commencement onward. Whereas
in 1877, 14,706 samples, and in 1883, 19,648 samples were
analysed, in 1904-1905 the number was no less than 84,678,
or an average of one sample to 384 inhabitants for the whole
country. In the five years 1877--1881 the proportion found
adulterated was 16.2%; in the following five years ending with
1886, the percentage was 13.9; in the five years ending 1891,
the percentage was 11.7; and in the year 1904 the percentage
was only 8.5. The select committee found that wide local
differences in the administration of the acts existed, and
that in many parts of the country the local authorities had
failed to exercise their powers. In one metropolitan district,
eight members of the local authority had been convicted of
offences under the acts, upon evidence obtained by their own
inspector. The result was that the duties of the inspector
of the acts were afterwards controlled by a committee of that
local authority, who decided the cases in which prosecutions
should be.undertaken, and the administration of the acts was
``little better than a farce.'' No power existed to compel
local authorities to carry out the acts. The committee came
to the conclusion that in many cases the responsibility for the
adulteration of articles of food did not rest with the retailer
but with the wholesale dealer or manufacturer; that the law
punished petty offences and left great ones untouched; that
it fined a small retailer and left the wholesale offender scot
free. As regards warranty, they thought that the precedent
created by the Margarine Act should be followed generally, and
that invoices and equivalent documents should have the force of
warranties. They found that a considerable proportion of the
food imports were adulterated, out of 890 samples of butter
taken by the customs in 1895 no less than 106 being impure,
and they recommended that in addition to tea, which by section
30 of the act of 1875 was to be systematically analysed by
the customs, prior to being passed for distribution, samples
of all food imports should be taken and examined by the
customs. The committee further found that the penalties
imposed under the acts had for the most part been trifling and
quite insufficient to serve as deterrents, the profits derived
from the sale of adulterated articles being out of proportion
great to the insignificant fines imposed, and they recommended
that for the second offence the penalty of L. 5 should be
the minimum one, and that in respect to third or subsequent
offences imprisonment without the option of a fine might be
inflicted. The important question of food standards was
considered at great length. The absence of legal standards
or definitions of articles of food had occasioned great
difficulty in numerous cases, but as no authority was provided
by the existing acts that might fix such standards, they
recommended the formation of a scientific authority or court
of reference composed of representatives of the laboratory of
the Inland Revenue, of the Local Government Board, the Board
of Agriculture, the General Medical Council, the Institute of
Chemistry, the Pharmaceutical Society, of other scientific
men and of the trading and manufacturing community, who
should have the duty of fixing standards of quality and
purity of food to be confirmed by a secretary of state.
The committee's deliberations and recommendations resulted
in the Sale of Food and Drugs Act 1899. This unfortunately
was not a comprehensive act superseding the previous acts,
but was an additional and amending one, so that at the
present time four food acts run parallel and are together in
force, rendering the subject from a legal point of view one
of extreme complexity. In this act the growing influence
of the Board of Agriculture and the desire to assist farmers
and dairymen more decisively than previously are clearly
apparent. Section 1 empowers the customs to take samples of
consignments of imported articles of food and enjoins them
to communicate to the Board of Agriculture the names of the
importers of adulterated goods, any article of food to be
considered adulterated or impoverished if it has been mixed
with any other substance (other than preservative or colouring
matter, of such a nature and such a quantity as not to render
the article injurious to health), or if any part of it has been
abstracted to the detriment of the article. Margarine or cheese
containing margarine has to be conspicuously marked as such;
condensed, separated or skim milk has to be clearly labelled
``machine-skimmed milk'' or ``skimmed milk,'' as the case may
be. The next sections give to the Local Government Board
and the Board of Agriculture a roving commission to see that
the acts are properly enforced throughout the kingdom so as
to apply the acts more equally throughout the country than
heretofore, and in default of local authorities carrying out
their duties empower the government departments mentioned
to execute and enforce the acts at the expense of the local
authorities. The importance of a regular and conscientious
control of the public food supply by the local authorities
was thus for the first time, after forty years of experimental
legislation, fully acknowledged. In recognition of the great
difficulties experienced for many years by analysts in their
endeavour to fix minimum percentages for the fat and other milk
constituents, and their inability to do so without statutory
powers, the Board of Agriculture is authorized by section 4
to make regulations ``for determining what deficiency in any
of the normal constituents of genuine milk, cream, butter or
cheese, or what addition of extraneous matter or proportion of
water'' in any of these materials shall raise a presumption,
until the contrary is proved, that these articles are not
genuine. In pursuance of these powers the Board of Agriculture
did in 1901 issue their milk regulations, adopting officially
the minima agreed upon by public analysts, and in 1902 the
sale of butter regulations, which fixed 16% as the maximum
of water that might be contained in butter. It is important
to note that the fact of a sample of milk falling short of
the standard is not conclusive evidence of adulteration,
but it justifies the institution of proceedings and casts
the onus of proving that the sample is genuine upon the
defendant. The Margarine Act of 1887 was extended to margarine
cheese, the obligatory labelling of margarine packages was
more precisely regulated, margarine manufacturers and dealers
in that article were compelled to keep a register open to
inspection by the Board of Agriculture, showing the quantity
and designation of each consignment, and power was given
to officers of the board to enter at all reasonable times
manufactories of margarine and margarine cheese. The amount
of butter-fat that might be present in margarine was limited
to 10%, while under the Margarine Act of 1887 an unlimited
admixture might have been made, provided that the mixture,
no matter how large the percentage of butter, was sold as
margarine. As is further explained below, the difficulty
of distinguishing without chemical aid between pure butter
and margarine containing a considerable percentage of butter
is very great, and fraudulent sales continued to be common
after the passing of the Margarine Act. The labelling section
of the Food Act 1875 (sec. 8), which had been systematically
circumvented, was modified, a label being no longer recognized
as distinctly and legibly written or printed, unless it is
so written or printed that the notice of mixture given by the
label is not obscured by other matter on the label, though
labels that had been continuously in use for at least seven
years before the commencement of the act were not interfered
with. In consequence of the admitted unfairness of asking
for a portion of the contents of a properly labelled tin
or package and then instituting proceedings because no
declaration of admixture had been made, it was enacted that
no person shall be required to sell any article exposed for
sale in an unopened tin or packet, except in the unopened
tin or packet in which it is contained. This removed a
grievance which had long been felt both by retailers and
manufacturers, and is a provision of growing importance
with the continually increasing sale of articles put up in
factories. The warranty provisions, which, as before stated,
had given rise to much litigation, were more clearly defined.
A notice that a defendant would rely for his defence upon a
warranty had to be given within seven days of the service of
the summons or the defence would not be available, and the
warrantor was empowered to appear at the hearing and to give
evidence so that no man's name could, as sometimes previously
happened, be dragged into a case without due notice to
him. A warranty or invoice given by a person resident outside
