PRESERVATIVES IN FOOD.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 20098, 8 November 1928, Page 5

PRESERVATIVES IN FOOD.

SEQUEL TO ENGLISH BAN

It. lias taken an outbreak of paratyphoid, extending throughout London and part of tho nioro distant suburbs, to make the public realiso that tlio anti-preservative order involves as much danger as it was supposed to avoid. By this time everybody has read tho investigations into the outbreak which lias caused over one- hundred cases to be reported in the Metropolitan area alone, and the causes of which arc variously described to cream, milk, meat, and preserved foods, say The Dairy (London). There has been, on tho part of the lay press, a fairly genera! recognition of the fact that if perishable food,' such as milk and cream, are not. lo be kept sweet by tho use of preservatives, the risk to the public health is clear. 'lho other risk which, according to tho experts the public ran, was the supposititious risk of injury to tho digest ivo apparatus from the uso of boric acid. , With almost universal accord the lay press has now called upon tho experts who dominated tho Department of Health in the matter of this legislation to justify the data on which they based their propaganda. As was remarked last month in the pages of Tho Dairy, the experts have taken heed Mid succee led in dragging with them tho Department of Health into a course of action which only the most convincing evidence could have justified, viz,, the prohibition of (lie use of preservatives in milk products.