BORIC ACID IN FOODS

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 121, 26 May 1925, Page 7

BORIC ACID IN FOODS

A COMPLAINT AND AN ANSWER. "Lucrezia Borgia" is the pen name of! a- correspondent who writes complaining of the excessive use of "boric acid and other poisons" in food, instancing milk, cream, preserved meat, and fish, and margarine. "In fact," states the writer of the letter, "om daily bread (to be inexact) is a chemicalised compromise , with food putrefaction delayed till the | food is sold" to the public. The writer \ describes "boric acid as "the whited sepulchre of putrefaction." The District I Health Department was asked to furnish |an answer, and aid so. It was to the ! effect that boric acid must not be used i in milk or cream, and it had not been j found in the samples taken this year, or for several years past. The legal allowance oj boric acid permitted in butter and margarine was 20 grains to the pound, or 0.35 per cent. In samples of butter and margarine taken for analysis by the Health Department the presence of boric acid beyond the legal limit was rarely found; in fact, it ' was t|!iitc uncommon for the limit to be reached. In niiiny cases boric acid was entirely absent from the samples. I The use of boric acid in potted fish :uid meat pastes was absolutely prohib- . . ilcd. .