£10,000 CHALLENGE

Waikato Times, Volume 96, Issue 15118, 14 December 1922, Page 7

£IO,OOO CHALLENGE

WHICH IS MOST LIABLE TO DETERIORATION. TINNED OR FRESH FOOD? LONDON, October 26. The manufacturers of canned foods are not taking the medical alarms and excursions about the risk attached to the consumption of their goods lying down.

One prominent producer has issued a challenge and an offer to back his assertion to the tune of £IO,OOO. The challenger is Mr Angus Watson, known perhaps most widely as the maker of the Skipper brand of sardines. "If a committee of scientists were appointed to study the whole question, I should be prepared to give £IO,OOO to any public charity if it could be shown that preserved foods are not as safe for consumption as fresh meat, fish, fruit or vegetables." He declares himself as personally convinced that the reputable packers of preserved food take more care over the cleanliness, soundness, and general excellence of their products than many of the purveyors of fresh food. Compared with the conditions existing in this Preserved Food Cannery, for example, our street milk supply is a scandal and our open butchers' shops a disgrace, he asserted. This is all the more important in view of the fact that the Food Investigation Report of 1922 just issued has again calling attention to the defaults in some tinned goods. The report says of tinned herrings: "In case the puree contained an amount of tin which would correspond to 0.6 grain per lb of the mixture of puree and aerring.

"Specimens of tomato puree made in the laboratory were highly acid, due chiefly to oxalic, oitric, tartaric, and malic acid. "Gommeerial samples, however, contained much less free acid and were probably neutralised with sodium carbonate at some stage in their preparation'."

The tin is dissolved from the pure tin plate or from tin-coated iron plate by the cooking processes, acid salts, and the constituents of the herring.

It appears that the tin is dissolved progressively during storage periods. One specimen of tinned herrings seven years old was found to contain as much as 9.6 grains of tin per pound. This but. emphasises the need that the public should handle tinned foods properly. Much of the evil set down to tinned food is in reality due to its careless handling when opened for use. If care is taken in that respect and in buying goods of reputable firms, the risks are reduced lo an infinitesimal rate.

Mr Watson recommended the following precautions: — See that tho tin openers are sterilised in boiling water. Name and address of reputed manufacturer should be on every article bought. If the container is tin the whole contents should be emptied at once; if glass, it should be covered with muslin. The safest test is the nose.

Reputable manufacturers, Mr Watson emphasised, spare no pains in their efforts lo maintain a goodwill which may have cost anything up lo £1,000,000 lo build up. "It must be remembered," he added, "thai certain quite wholesome foods do not agree Willi people in certain conditions of health. Some, for instance, cannot cat cherries and cream, others arc poisoned by Hhcll-llsli, ami in others, again, strawberries bring out a rash." In no other way can the salmon ol Siberia, the crabs of Japan, the tongues of the Argentine beasts, and the pineapples of Singapore reach the densely populated ureas thousands of miles away. Necessity has compelled man to store the abundance, of one season against the scarcity of another. Modern research methods have reduced the process to a fine art.