Other Articles:--
Ginger . . . . 704 .. ..
Syrup and Treacle . 183 8 4.4
Baking Powder . . 281 11 3.9
Vinegar . . . 773 57 7.4
Arrowroot . . . 467 3 0.6
Oatmeal . . . 359 .. ..
Sago . . . . 227 14 6.2
Olive Oil . . . 306 9 2.9
Dripping and Fat . 85 1 1.2
Sundries . . 2,496 329 13.2
Total other Articles 5,881 432 7.3
All Articles . . . 84,678 7,173 8.5
territory or the District of Columbia, wherever such foods
may have been produced. The law does not affect foods
manufactured and sold wholly within one state, nor such as
have been shipped from another state but not in the original
package. While thus the National Food Law is mainly intended
to regulate the food traffic between the different states,
and leaves to the states freedom to regulate their internal
traffic, it must gradually tend to unify the present complicated
state food legislation, and it is therefore here more
usefully considered than would be the separate state laws.
The definition of adulteration as set forth in sec. 7 is as
follows:---``For the purpose of this act an article shall be
deemed to be adulterated: In the case of drugs: (1) If, when
a drug is sold under or by a name recognized in the United
States Pharmacopoeia or National Formulary, it differs from the
standard of strength, quality or purity, as determined by the
test laid down in the United States Pharmacopoeia or National
Formulary official at the time of investigation; provided
that no drug defined in the United States Pharmacopoeia or
National Formulary shall be deemed to be adulterated under
this provision if the standard of strength, quality or purity
be plainly stated upon the bottle, box or other container
thereof although the standard may differ from that determined
by the test laid down in the United States Pharmacopoeia or
National Formulary. (2) If its strength or purity fall below
the professed standard or quality under which it is sold.
In the case of confectionery: If it contains terra alba,
barytes, talc, chrome yellow or other mineral substance or
poisonous colour or flavour, or other ingredient deleterious
or detrimental to health, or any vinous, malt or spirituous
liquor or compound or narcotic drug. In the case of food:
(1) If any substance has been mixed and packed with it so
as to reduce or lower or injuriously affect its quality or
strength. (2) If any substance has been substituted wholly or
in part for the article. (3) If any valuable constituent of
the article has been wholly or in part abstracted. (4) If it
be mixed, coloured, powdered, coated or stained in a manner
whereby damage or inferiority is concealed. (5) If it contain
any added poisonous or other added deleterious ingredient
which may render such article injurious to health: provided
that when in the preparation of food products for shipment
they are preserved by any external application applied in
such manner that the preservation is necessarily removed
mechanically, or by maceration in water, or otherwise, and
directions for removal of said preservations shall be printed
on the covering of the package, the provisions of the act
shall be construed as applying only when said products are
ready for consumption. (6) If it consists in whole or in
part of a filthy, decomposed or putrid animal or vegetable
substance, or any portion of an animal unfit for food, whether
manufactured or not, or if it is the product of a diseased
animal or one that has died otherwise than by slaughter. . . .''
Whatever vagueness attaches to these definitions is intended
to be removed by secs. 3 and 4, which provide that the
secretaries of the Treasury, of Agriculture, and of Commerce
and Labour ``shall make uniform rules and regulations
for carrying out the provisions of the act, including the
collection and examination of specimens of food and drugs,''
which examination ``shall be made in the bureau of chemistry
of the department of agriculture, or under the direction and
supervision of such bureau, for the purpose of determining
from such examinations whether such articles are adulterated
or misbranded within the meaning of the act.'' Contravention
of the act is punishable for the first offence by a fine not
exceeding 500 dollars or 1 year's imprisonment or both, and for
each subsequent offence by a fine not less than 1000 dollars
or 1 year's imprisonment or both. Under an act of congress,
approved March 1903, the bureau of agriculture established
standards of purity for food products, ``to determine what
are regarded as adulterations therein for the guidance of the
officials of the various states and of the courts of justice.''
The elaborate set of food definitions and standards worked
out under the guidance of the chief of the bureau, Dr H. W.
Wiley, have also received legal sanction and form a corollary
to the National Food Law. For each of the more important
articles of food an official definition of its nature and
composition has thus been established, of the utmost value
to food officers, manufacturers and merchants not only in
the United States but throughout the world. A few of these
definitions may here find a place:-``Lard is the rendered
fresh fat from slaughtered healthy hogs. Leaf-lard is the
lard rendered at moderately high temperatures from the internal
fat of the abdomen of the hog, excluding that adherent to the
intestines. Standard lard and standard leaflard are lard
and leaf-lard respectively, free from rancidity, containing
not more than 1% of substances other than fatty acids, not
fat, necessarily incorporated therewith in the process of
rendering, and standard leaf-lard has an iodine number not
greater than 60. Milk is the lacteal secretion obtained by
the complete milking of one or more healthy cows, properly
fed and kept, excluding that obtained within 10 days before
and 5 days after calving. Standard milk is milk containing
not less than 12% of total solids and not less than 8 1/2% of
solids not fat, nor less than 3 1/4% of milk-fat. Standard
skim-milk is skim-milk containing not less than 9 1/4% of
milk-solids. Standard condensed milk and standard sweetened
condensed milk are condensed milk and sweetened condensed milk
respectively, containing no less than 28% of milk-solids,
of which not less than one-fourth is milk-fat. Standard
milk-fat or butter-fat has a Reichert-Meissl number not less
than 24 and a specific gravity at 40 C. not less than 0.905.
Standard butter is butter containing not less than 82.5% of
butter-fat. Standard whole-milk cheese is cheese containing
in the water-free substance not less than 50% of butter-fat.
Standard sugar contains at least 99.5% of sucrose. Standard
chocolate is chocolate containing not more than 3% of ash
insoluble in water, 3.5% of crude fibre, and 9% of starch, nor
less than 45% of cocoa-fat.'' Numerous other standards with
details too technical for reproduction here have also been fixed.
German Empire.--The law of the 14th of May 1879, largely
based upon the English Food and Drugs Act 1875, regulates
the trade in food. Each town or district appoints a public
analyst, and there is a state laboratory in Berlin directly
under the control of the ministry of the interior with advisory
functions. The ministry, under the advice of this department,
issues from time to time regulations concerning the sale of
or details specifying the mode of analysis of various products
of food or drink. Both in the United States and in Germany,
therefore, the executive officers (public analysts) have some
authoritative official department for guidance and information.
PARTICULAR ARTICLES ADULTERATED
We now proceed to consider adulteration as practised
during recent years in the more important articles of food.
Milk.---Milk adulteration means in modern times either
addition of water, abstraction of cream, or both, or addition
of chemical preservative. The old stories of the use of chalk
or of sheep's brains are fables. Owing to the wide variation
to which milk is naturally subjected in composition, it is
exceedingly difficult to establish beyond doubt whether any
given sample is in the state in which it came from the cow or
has been impoverished. The composition of cow's milk varies
with many conditions. (1) The race of the animal: the large
cows of the plains yielding a great quantity of poor milk,
the smaller cows from hilly districts less amount of rich
milk. Hence, milk from Dutch cows compares very unfavourably
with that of Jerseys or short-horns. Watery and acid foods
like mangolds and brewers' grains produce a more aqueous
milk than do albuminous and fatty foods like oil-cakes. (2)
Sudden change of food, of weather and of temperature. (3)
Nervous disturbances to which even a cow is subject, as, for
instance, at shows, may greatly influence the composition
of the milk. The portion obtained at the beginning of
a milking is poorer in fat than that yielded towards the
end. Morning milk is as a rule poorer in fat than evening
milk. Soon after calving the animal gives a richer product
than at later periods, both the quantity and the composition
declining towards the end of the lactation. The variations due
to these different circumstances may be very great, as is seen
from the following analyses, fairly representing the maximum,
minimum and mean composition of the milk of single cows:--
Minimum Maximum Mean
Specific Gravity 1.0264 1.0370 1.0316
Fat 1.67% 6.47% 3.59%
Casein 1.79% 6.29% 3.02%
Albumen 0.25% 1.44% 0.50%
Milk Sugar (lactose) 2.11% 6.12% 4.78%
Salts 0.35% 1.21% 0.71%
Water 80.32% 90.69% 87.40%
In market milk such wide variations are not so liable to
occur, as the milk from one animal tends to average that
from another, but even in the milk from herds of cows the
variations may be considerable. The average composition of
genuine milk supplied by one of the largest dairy companies in
London, as established by the analysis of 120,000 separate
samples recorded by Dr P. Vieth, is fat 4.1%, other milk
solids (``solids not fat'' or ``nonfatty solids'') 8.8%, total
dissolved matters (total solids) 12.9%, the variations being
from 3.6 to 4.6% in the fat and 8.6 to 9.1% in the solids not
fat. It is clear that the 4.6% of fat could be reduced, by
skimming, to 3.0%, and the 9.1% of solids not fat to 8.5% by
addition of water, without bringing the composition of the
milk thus adulterated outside that of genuine milk. In reality
even wider limits of variation must be reckoned with, because
small farmers self the milk of single cows, and this, as shown
above, may fluctuate enormously. The Board of Agriculture,
in pursuance of the powers conferred upon it by the Food Act
1899, issued in 1901 ``The Sale of Milk Regulations,'' which
provide that where a sample of milk (not being milk sold as
skimmed or separated or condensed milk) contains less than 3% of
milk-fat, or less than 8.5% of non-fatty solids, it shall be
presumed, until the contrary is proved, that the milk is not
