The Waipawa Mail. Published Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. Thursday, May 4, 1905. ADULTEBATION OF FOOD.

Waipawa Mail, Volume XXV, Issue 4807, 4 May 1905, Page 2

The Waipawa Mail. Published Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. Thursday, May 4, 1905. ADULTEBATION OF FOOD.

In a particularly interesting contribution by Senator Porter J. M'Cumber to one of the American magazines it is pointed out that the sale of adulterated articles in the United States covers a great proportion of the entire commerce in foods. Some years ago the Secretary of Agriculture put the proportion down at 15 per cent., after making every possible allowance, but Senator M'Cumber seems to think that the results should be doubled in any attempted estimate to-day. He quotes from a paper presented before the National Pure Food Congress last summer by Professor Ladd, B’ood Commissioner of North Dakota. The latter shows, among other things, that while potted chicken and turkey should be common products, never a can containing a determinable quantity of either chicken or turkey could Be-found in the State. More than 90 per cent, of the local meat markets use chemical preservatives, and boracic acid and borates are common ingredients in smallgoods. 80-called French peas from North Dakota are found to contain copper salts, 85 per cent of the canned mushrooms are bleached with sulphites, many of the catsups are made from the waste products of the eanners—too unpleasant to think about, much less enumerate—and 70 per cent of the cocoas and chocolates contain foreign matter. These are but a few of the articles which are sent into other States, and are not only fraudulent, but in many instances are positively dangerous as articles of food. Butter fat is eliminated from the milk, and hog fat is substituted. Cheese and cream are not true to name, 11 Manufacturers of ice cream use no cream whatever; instead they use condensed skimmed milk—condensed until it is as thick as ordinary cream, and then mixed with neutral lard.” Cream itself, purchased for the table, is manufactured from skim milk. Medicines are treated in the same way, so that of “ 373 samples of phenacetin bought from as many retail druggists in the city of New York, 315 were found to be adulterated with acetanilid, a drug having a strong depressing influence on the heart.” This at once raises the issue of the sick and suffering, of children and the aged. Doctors who order gluten flour for diebetic patients, to prevent difficulty with flour and starch, find that they cannot be sure of obtaining a pure article. The patients die, and doctors fail to understand why their remedies have done no good. But this is all set forth in what may be considered

an official document. This problem, so pressing in the United States because so many people are involved, should be attacked here, because the factors are less complicated and public opinion is alive and active.