£10,000 CHALLENGE.

Auckland Star, Volume LIII, Issue 296, 14 December 1922, Page 3

£10,000 CHALLENGE.

c WHICH MOST LIABLE TO s DETERIORATION 7 v * TINNED OR FRESH FOOD. p (From Our Special Correspondent.) i LOXDOX, October 26. The manufacturers of canned foods o, are not taking the medical alarms and -I excursions about the risk attached to t the consumption of tlieir g-oods lying r | down. p One prominent producer has iss,ued -|a challenge and an oiler to back Ins r. assertion to the tune of i'lo,ooo. r| The challenger is Mr. Angus Watson, s known perhaps most widely as the maker c of the Skipper .'brand of sardines. "If ! ..I a committee of scientists were appointed 1 to study the whole question, 1 should j ! be prepared to give £10,000 to any public] 0 charity if it could toe shown that pre- j .! served foods are not as safe for con.j sumption as fresh meat, fish, fruit, or . vegetables.'' | lie declares himself as personally con. j <J vinced that the reputable packers of | t preserved food take more care over the l * cleanliness, soundness, and general ex- j a. cellence of their products than many of | , the purveyors o-f fresh food. I Compared with.tho conditions existing ■in this Preserved Food Cannery, for, i 'i example, our street milk supply is a j scandal and our open butchers' shops a ' disgrace, he asserted. This is all the more important in view ' of the fact that the Food Investigation Report for 1022 just issued has again 1 been calling attention to the defaults in some tinned goods. The report says j of tinned herrings:—"ln one case the puree contained an amount of tin which would correspond to 0.6 grain per pound of the mixture of puree and herring. 'Specimens of tomato puree made in the laboratory were highly acid, due chiefly to oxalic, citric, tartaric, and malic acids. ''Commercial samples, however, contained much less free acid and were probably neutralised with sodium carbonate at some stage in their preparation. - ' The tin is dissolved from the pure tin plate or from tin-coated iron plate Iby the cooking processes, acid salts, and I the constituents of the herring. It appears that the tin is dissolved ' | progressively during storage periods. One specimen of tinned herrings seven years old was found to contain as much as Ofi strains of tin per pound. This hut emphasises the need that the public Bhowld handle tinned foods properly. "Much of the evil set down to Untied food is in reality due to its careless handling when opened for use. IT care is taken in that respect and in buvine goods of reputable firms _ tfhe reduced to an infinitesimal ■ rate. Mr. IVatson recommends the following precautions: See that the tin-openers are sterilised in "boiling water. Name and address of reputed manufacturer should be on every article bought. If , the container is tin, the whole contents should toe emptied at once: if glass, it should be covered with .muslin. The safest test is the nose. Reputable manufacturers. Mr. Watson emphasised, spare no pains in their efforts to maintain a goodwill which may have cost anything up to £1,000.000 to build up. ''It/must be remembered." lie added, "that certain quite wholesome foods do j not agree with people in certain con- I ditions of health. Some, for instance, I cannot eat cherries ami cream, others | are poisoned by shell-fish, and in others, j again, strawberries bring out a rash." ! "■Til no other way can the salmon of | i Siberia, the crabs of Japan, the tongues of the Argentine beats, and the pinei apples of Singapore reach the densely * populated areas thousands of miles away. XecesMtv has compelled man to store the abundance of one season against the : scarcity of another. Modern research ' methods have reduced (he process to a .' fine art. |