BORON COMPOUNDS

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 144, 8 September 1927, Page 9

BORON COMPOUNDS

USE IN BACON-CURING STATEMENT BY MINISTER (THE SUN’S Parliamentary Reporter.) WELLINGTON, Wednesday. Prosecutions which have resulted from the sale in Auckland of bacon and ham contrary to the sale of Food and Drugs Act are, according to the Minister of Health, neither the beginning nor the end of the activity of the Department of Health in dealing with the use of boron compounds in curing meat. Mr. Young says that the regulations have been in force since 1913 and have never been suspended. All curers throughout New Zealand have had full warning, and if the result of sampling discloses the use of boron preservative the usual prosecutions will follow. The Alinister stated in the House today that the firm in Auckland which was recently lined for selling bacon with a prohibited preservative was the successful tenderer for supplies of bacon to the Auckland Mental Hospital and St. Helens Hospital, Auckland, but declined to take up the contract. Samples of bacon were taken on Alonday, September 5, from the supplies actually in use at the two institutions named and were examined for boron preservative with negative result. Simultaneously, samples were taken from the supplier with the same result. This supplier’s goods also were found satisfactory previously when a number of Auckland firms’ goods were sampled, and the i*esult in some cases led to prosecutions.