“INDESCRIBABLE FILTH”

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXII, Issue 19363, 21 July 1925, Page 9

“INDESCRIBABLE FILTH”

PACKING SMYRNA FRUIT. INSANITY RY CONDITIONS REVEALED. Astounding revelations regarding the insanitary conditions prevailing i%i the Smyrna fruit trade arc made by Dr. L. Haden Guest, M.P., secretary of the Labour Party Commonwealth Group, and" formerly Parliamentary private secretary to the Minister for Health, | who has returned to London from a visit to the chief fruit centres of the Levant, and who is contributing a series of articles to a London daily. After referring to the precautions taken in England to secure a supply or clean, home-grown foodstuffs Dr. Guest Says: “Wo have no control over the handling, packing, and transport of the, thousands of tons of foodstuffs which are imported into Britain. “Figs and sultanas from Smyrna are sorted, packed, and trampled upon under conditions of hardly describable dirt. Thc handling and packing of currants from Greece .is better only by comparison. “Britain imports 100,000 tons of these sultanas, figs, and currants. TRAMPLED UNDERFOOT. “The fruit-packing sheds in Smyrna are situated in little lanes off narrow, dirty streets, and are occupied by male and female workers who arc miserably poor, ragged, and dirty. They tramp barefoot in and out of the dirty streets and in and out of the sheds where the fruit, which is heaped on thc floor, is packed by being trampled under their bare feet. “Thc conditions are dirty to an extent. indescribable outside a medical paper. “Primitive sanitary rules exist, but there are no inspectors to enforce them. Lavatories arc on the same floor as the fruit, and anyone entering a lavatory lis supposed to wear wooden slippers, which are placed outside thc doors. “Thc rules forbid packers to spit on the floor or to compress the figs with their teeth in order to shape them.” MERCHANTS ALARMED. These disclosures, stated a later message from London, have alarmed Smyrna merchants, who are considering their reply. The Sydney Sun’s inquiries show that London dealers employ machinery to cleanse thc Levant fruit before it is retailed. Mr. Edmund Burke, chairman of Peek Bros, and Winch, Ltd., wholesale grocers, told the Sun representative: “By the irony of fate, the disclosures emanate from a member of thc Labour Government, which refused Empire preferences. AUSTRALIAN THE BEST. “I will open Britons’ eyes to the necessity for consuming more of the Empire’s dried fruits, which are handled by people of the same cleanly habits as themselves,” he said. “Australia’s grading of canned fruits and the splendid grading of dried fruits are improving, and the fruits are of a. richer quality than those from the Levant. “If the Australians undertake that each consignment will be uniformly graded, we could resell on sample and guarantee to obtain better prices.

“To-day we must resell without a guarantee. Personally I would like to see the Empire preferences on dried fruits doubled, as well as the McKenna (duties. This would have thc effect of bringing about the production of a greater variety of foodstuffs and minerals than elsewhere.” The Daily Mail, in an editorial, calls attention to the horrible revelations, and says: “Dirty, even diseased, (Asiatics, working in filthy sheds in squalid lanes, arc handling to-day fruit that we will be eating next month. These conditions are sickening and intolerable, and failing adequate safeguard against dirt, and disease, the people of Britain would bo well advise I to join the ever-increasing public which prefers to buy its fruit from Australia and other places within the Empire.' ! Dr. Haden Guest served as a ’ivii 'surgeon during the South African War, find also throughout the European War, for the first throe years in France and for thc remainder of thc time in !Egypt and Palestine, attaining the rank of major in the R.A.M.c. He Iplso organised several hospitals under (the French Red Cross, and foun’icd lhe I Angb> h■p; ch committee of rl:u ib i Cross S<ci(ty and the Order of St John. He wUs secretary ami physician ito the Labour delegation to Soviet Russia in 1920. U.S.A. INVESTIGATING. HEALTH OFFICIALS LEAVING. LONDON. June 22. | The Constantinople correspondent of j the Daily Mail reports that, as a Jesuit of the article by Dr. Hu I. a Gu?.-i, (M.P., revealing the insanitary conditions of the Levant dried fruit trade, I the United States is sending two officials of the Health Department to in (vestigate thc fruit-packing industry at Smyrna. The Turkish Government is obtaining from Germany mechanical presses for hygenic packing, which exporters will be compelled to install.