crystallized copper sulphate. The opinion of the departmental
committee was clearly expressed that the practice should be
prohibited. No effect has been given to the recommendation.
Milk is naturally almost white with a tint of cream colour.
When adulterated with water this tint changes to a bluish
one. To hide this tell-tale of a fraud, a yellow colouring
matter used to be added by London milkmen. Very gradually
this practice, which had its origin in fraud, has extended
to all milk sold in London. The consumer, mis-educated into
believing milk to be yellow, now requires it to be so. Large
dairy companies have endeavoured to wean the public of its
error, without success. From milk the practice extended to
butter; natural butter is sometimes yellowish, mostly a faint
fawn, and sometimes almost white. In agricultural districts
this is well known and taken as a matter of course. In big
towns, where the connexion of butter and the cow is not well
known, the consumer requires butter to be of that colour
which he imagines to be butter-colour. Anatto, turmeric,
carrot-juice used formerly to be employed for colouring
milk, butter and cheese, but of late certain aniline dyes,
mostly quite as harmless physiologically as the vegetable
dyes just mentioned, are largely being used. The same aniline
dyes are also employed in the manufacture of an imitation
Demerara sugar from white beet sugar crystals. Aniline
dyes are very frequently used by jam-makers; the natural
colour of the fruit is apt to suffer in the boiling-pan, and
unripe, discoloured or unsound fruit can be made brilliant
and enticing by dye. The brilliant colours of cheap sugar
confectionery are almost invariably produced by artificial
tar-colours. Most members of this class of colouring matters
are quite harmless, especially in the small quantities that
are required for colouring, but there are a few exceptions,
picric acid, dinitrocresol, Martius-yellow, Bismarck brown
and one of the tropaeolins being distinctly poisonous. On
the whole, the employment of powerful aniline dyes is an
advance as compared with the use of the vicious and often
highly poisonous mineral colours which Hassall met with
so frequently in the middle of the 19th century. Mineral
colours, with very few exceptions, are no longer used in
food. Oxide of iron or ochre is still very often found in potted
meats, fish sauces and chocolates; dioxide of manganese is
admixed with cheap chocolates. All lump sugar of commerce is
dyed. Naturally it has a yellow tint. Ultramarine is added
to it and counteracts the yellowness. In the same way our
linen is naturally yellow and only made to look white by the
use of the blue-bag. The same idea underlies both practices,
and indeed the use of all colouring matters in manufactured
articles, namely, to make them look better than they would
otherwise. Within bounds, this is a reasonable and laudable
desire, but it also covers many sins--poor materials, bad
workmanship, faulty manufacturing and often fraud. Like
sugar, flour and rice are sometimes blued to make them look
white. All vinegar, most beers, all stout, are artificially
coloured with burnt sugar or caramel. The line dividing the
legitimate and laudable from the fraudulent and punishable
is so thin and difficult to draw that neither the law nor
its officers have ventured to draw it, and yet it is a
matter which urgently requires regulation at the hands of the
state. Practices which, when new, admit of regulation are
almost ineradicable when they have become old and possessed
of ``vested rights.'' Recognizing this, the departmental
committee, like the royal commission on arsenical poisons,
recommended that ``means be provided, either by the
establishment of a separate court of reference, or by the
imposition of more direct obligation on the Local Government
Board, to exercise supervision over the use of preservatives
and colouring matters in foods and to prepare schedules of
such as may be considered inimical to the public health.''
In close connexion with this subject is the occasional
occurrence of injurious metallic impurities in food-materials.
Tin chloride is used in the West Indies to produce the yellow
colour of Demerara sugar. The old processes of sugar-boiling
left some of the brown syrup attached to the crystals, giving
them both their colour and their delicious aroma; with the
introduction of modern processes affording a much greater
yield of highly refined sugar, white sugar only was the
result. The consumer, accustomed to yellow sugar had the
colour artificially supplied by the action of the tin compound
upon the sugar. At the present time all Demerara sugar,
with the exception of that portion that is dyed with aniline
dye, has had its colour artificially given it and consequently
contains strong traces of tin. Soda-water, lemonade and
other artificial aerated liquors are liable to tin or lead
contamination, the former proceeding from the tin pipes and
vessels, the latter from citric and tartaric acids and cream
of tartar used as ingredients, these being crystallized by
their manufacturers in leaden pans. Almost all ``canned''
goods contain more or less tin as a contamination from the
tin-plate. While animal foods do not attack the tin to any
great extent, their acidity being small, almost all vegetable
materials, especially fruits and tomatoes, powerfully corrode
the tin covering of the plate, dissolving it and becoming
impregnated with tin compounds. It is quite easy to obtain
tin-reactions in abundance from every grain of tinned
peaches, apples or tomatoes. These tin compounds are by no
means innocuous; yet poisoning from tinned vegetable foods
is of rare occurrence. On the whole, tin-plate is a very
unsuitable material for the storage and preservation of acid
goods. Certain enamels, used for glazing earthenware or for
coating metal cooking pots, contain lead, which they yield
to the food prepared in them. Food materials that have been
in contact with galvanized vessels sometimes are contaminated
with zinc. Zinc is also not infrequently present in wines.
Results of English Food Acts.
The effect of the application of the food laws has been entirely
beneficial. Not only has the percentage proportion of samples found
adulterated largely declined, but the gross forms of adulteration
which prevailed in the middle of the 19th century have almost
vanished. Plenty of fraud still prevails, but poisoning by
reckless admixture is of exceedingly rare occurrence. Whilst
formerly milk was not infrequently adulterated with an equal
bulk of water, few fraudulent milkmen now venture to exceed
an addition of 10 or 15%. A bird's-eye view over the effect is
obtained from the following figures for England and Wales:--
Number of Samples
Year Examined Adulterated Percentage of Adulteration
1877 14706 2826 19.2
1879 17049 2535 14.8
1884 22951 3311 14.4
1889 26956 3096 11.5
1894 39516 4060 10.3
1899 53056 4970 9.4
1904 84678 7173 8.5
The details of the working of the Food Acts in 1904 in
England and Wales are set out in the table on the next page.
United States.---Each separate state has food laws of its
own. From the Ist of January 1907 the ``American National
Pure Food Law,'' applicable to the United States generally,
came into force, without superseding the State food laws,
the only effect of the National Law being the legalization
of shipments of any food which complies with the provisions
of the National Law into any state from another state, even
though the food is adulterated within the meaning of the state
law. The law applies to every person in the United States
who receives food from another state and offers it for sale
in the original unbroken packages in which he receives it,
and if it is adulterated or misbranded within the meaning of
the National Law he can be punished for having received it
and offering it for sale in the original unbroken package to
the same extent as the person who shipped it to him can be
punished. The mere fact that he is a citizen of a state soiling
food within that state will not excuse him; and he will be
subject to prosecution to the same extent as he would be if
he uttered counterfeit money. Retailers, however, can protect
themselves from prosecution when they sell goods in original
unbroken packages by procuring a written guarantee, signed by
the person from whom they received the goods, such guarantee
stating that the goods are not adulterated within the meaning
of the National Law. The guarantee must also contain the name
and address of the wholesale vendor, but unless the parties
signing the guarantee are residents of the United States
the guarantee is void. The law affects all foods shipped
from one state or district into another and also all foods
intended for export to a foreign country. It also affects
all food products manufactured or offered for sale in any
Table showing working of British Food Acts, 1904.
Samples Found Percentage
Examined Adulterated Adulterated
Milk . . . . . 36,413 4,031 11.1
Butter . . . . 15,124 867 5.7
Cheese . . . . 2,176 20 0.9
Margarine . . . 1,169 83 7.1
Lard . . . . . 2,489 4 0.2
Bread . . . . 473 1 0.2
Flour . . . . 476 3 0.6
Tea . . . . . 486 . . .
Coffee . . . . 2,550 161 6.3
Cocoa . . . . 477 42 8.8
Sugar . . . . 901 49 5.4
Mustard . . . . 812 39 4.8
Confectionery and Jam 1,303 72 5.5
Pepper . . . . 2,393 43 1.8
Wine . . . . . 308 54 17.5
Beer . . . . . 1,065 75 7.0
Spirits . . . . 6,938 832 12.0
Drugs:--
Camphorated Oil . 395 24 6.1
Sweet Spirit of Nitre 243 66 27.2
Sulphur . . . 131 7 5.3
Cream of Tartar 441 88 20.0
Glycerine . . . 192 21 10.9
Rhubarb preparations 96 5 5.2
Seidlitz Powders . 81 3 3.7
Linseed . . . 70 1 1.4
Magnesia . . . 48 9 18.8
Cod Liver Oil . . 245 7 2.9
Iron Pills . . . 16 .. ..
Compound Liquorice
Powder . . . 111 2 1.8
Tincture of Iodine . 23 4 17.4
Other Drugs . 1,124 124 11.0
Total Drugs . . . 3,214 365 11.3
