BLEACHED TRIPE

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22518, 28 September 1938, Page 15

BLEACHED TRIPE

TO THE .EDITOR OP TEE PRESS. Sir, —It is very alarming to hear that the Medical Officer of Health can only

act if a specific complaint is made to him- For at least the last six months every butcher’s shop has displayed large basins of bleached tripe for sale. I.constantly read in the papers of milkmen being fined for selling milk not of legal quality, and in no case is it mentioned that action was taken because of the complaint of a private person. Surely it is the fundamental duty of the health officer to search for and find out for himself if food is being sold preserved in a manner contrary to the laws of health and of the law. and not have to be gently led and persuaded to act by a private citizen;

I have found out for myself that the brains without any skin on them, displayed by every butcher, do not agree' with me, so I never buy them unless thev are chopped out of the head while I am standing by, in which case the skin is still covering them. What process is used to deprive them of that thin membrane I do not know, but the Inspector of Health should know, and if it is injurious the public should be warned and not by a private citizen.—Yours, etc., FOR HEALTH. September 23, 1938. t“The Health Department is concerned with meat inspections only when the meat is for sale to the public,” said Dr. T. Fletcher Telford, Medical Officer for Health, when he saw this letter yesterday. The department took all reasonable precautions to sample meat, he said, but it could not be on the track of one kind all the time. There was a great deal of work in analysing such foods as the correspondent mentions, and so with the complainant’s help a lot of work could be saved, and the investigations into defaulting samples could be limited.]