The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo. FRIDAY, MARCH 7, 1913. PURE FOOD.

Auckland Star, Volume XLIV, Issue 57, 7 March 1913, Page 4

The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo.

FRIDAY, MARCH 7, 1913. PURE FOOD.

For the cause that Jacks assistance, For the wrong that needs resistance, For the future in the distance, And the good that we am do.

The regulations which the Minister for Public Health has decided to enforce •against the adulteration of foodstuffs, and which appear in the "Gazette" this week, imake very interesting reading, not only for the general public, 'but for the tradespeople, who have undertaken the task of purveying food for others. Mr Rhodes declared in Welling-ton the other day that his object is to secure for everybody "a genuine dinner table"; and this end is to be attained largely by compelling the salesman, as far as possible, to Mescribe his goods correctly. If the consumer asks for coffee and the article sold him contains a large percentage of chicory, the label must say so, or the vendor will be lia&le to punishment. (But the correct labelling of goods is, of course, only one of many precautions that, as the experience of all other countries shows us, are necessary to prevent the .wholesale adulteration of food. A short time ago there was held at Sydney a Departmental Conference on fq.6d adulteration, and the establishment of a uniform standard for foods and drugs. Mr Rhodes has wisely taken advantage of the information collected and the decisions reached by this Conference, and ffew Zealand is now to get the benefit of the Pure Food regulations that are 'being enforced in practically all the Australian States. A very large variety of foodstuffs, including all the ordinary necessaries of life, are enumerated which ar« subject to the new regulations in regard to the presence of preservatives or any kind of deleterious foreign matter. A special section of the gazetted rules deals with the composition and sale of dr.ugs; and special regulations have been drawn up in regard to the sale of the two most important articles of ordinary diet, bread and milk. In our opinion the Minister for Public Health' has not taken this step too soon. It is. true that under, the Sale of Food and Drugs Act of 1908 certain powers are vested in the Public Health Department to dictate the character and quality of the food supply and to protect the puolie against fraud and injury. But ■comparativeily few foodstuffs have so far come under the department's regulations, and more stringent provisions are needed as well as greater energy in the enforcement of the law if the public health is to be adequately safeguarded. For th"c dangers to which we are thus exposed heset us on every hand. It is true that in regard to the foods produced in our own country we are much better off than the people of England; but in regard to imported foodstuffs the danger is universal. According to recent Government reports, published at Home, 10 per cent of the milk, 7 per cent of the butter, 10 per cent of the cocoa, 8 per cent of the sugar examined during 1910 was condemned as "unfit for human consumption; while cheese, lard, bread, coffee, mustard, confectionery, jam, wine, and 'beer, and even margarine, .were all more or less adulterated. But the case of tinned, preserved, and bottled foods is far worse. The British' reports show that on the average 27 per cent of the samples of potted fish were condemned, 16 per cent of the potted meats were adulterated, 40 per cent' of the fruits in syrup, 20 per cent of the sausages, 10 per cent of the vinegar, and 10 per cent of all the spirits submitted for examination. Even the means employed for adulteration are themselves adulterated; as in the case of margarme, used to eke out the supply of butter, which often contains vaseline; or lard, which itself contains either stearine or cotton seed oil. The ingenuity of the food adulterator is simply limitless, and even the drugs which are used nominally to protect various perishable forms of food from decay are themselves, when taken in cumulative doses, injurious to bodily health. It may he assumed that in a young country like ours, which is, in regard to the primary articles of diet, largely self-supporting, we would necesearily be better off than England, which depends so much on imported food supplies. But we are not likely to be much better off than America, and there the demand for pure food seems to be growing more insistent every year. The Pare Food and Drug Act passed in 1906, though it is a very comprehensive measure, has not succeeded in its purpose, because so many wealthy and powerful interests have combined to defy it. According to Dr.. E. A. Ayer3, an eminent dietetic authority in the United States, the average American breakfast or dinner, table)

is very far from -what' Mr Rhodes calk "genuine." The coffee te mixed with chicory and ground pease; the sausages are " filled " with stale biscuit, freshened up with saltpetre, and preserved with benzoic acid; the maple syrup te 90 per cent, glucose; the chops are coloured with nitre and red ochre; the peas are green with copper; the horse radish is ground turnip; the "pure leaf lard," in which the vegetables are fried, is partly cottonseed oil; the cream te skimmed milk thickened with viscogen and coloured with arnatto; the "home-made jelly," whatever its current denomination, works out at apple juice, glucose, gelatine, saccharine, and a flavouring coal-tar essence of "fruit according to taste," with a chemical formula two inches long. Against all these persistent and insidious efforts to defraud the consumer, without the least regard for hte income or his health, the general public is quite helpless unless some fixed standard of purity on all foods can be set up, and heavy penalties are enforced for an infringement of the law. This meians the establishment of a central authority which, with the help of scientific experts, shall define the "nature, substance, and quality" of every article of food; and it further means the construction of an elaborate mechanism of inspectors and officials, ■whose sole duty it shall be to examine food on sale, to report delinquents, and to exact appropriate penalties. Whether Mr Rhodes and his colleagues are prepared for the heavy expenditure that all this entails, we cannot say; but nothing less than this has been found to promise even a remote prospect of success for the Public Health Departments in England

and America.