practice is almost universal. In England the amount of copper corresponds to from one to two grains per pound of the vegetable calculated as crystallized copper sulphate. The opinion of the departmental committee was clearly expressed that the practice should be prohibited. No effect has been given to the recommendation.
Milk is naturally almost white with a tint of cream colour. When adulterated with water this tint changes to a bluish one. To hide this tell-tale of a fraud, a yellow colouring matter used to be added by London milkmen. Very gradually this practice, which had its origin in fraud, has extended to all milk sold in London. The consumer, mis-educated into believing milk to be yellow, now requires it to be so. Large dairy companies have endeavoured to wean the public of its error, without success. From milk the practice extended to butter; natural butter is sometimes yellowish, mostly a faint fawn, and sometimes almost white. In agricultural districts this is well known and taken as a matter of course. In big towns, where the connexion of butter and the cow is not well known, the consumer requires butter to be of that colour which he imagines to be butter-colour. Anatto, turmeric, carrot-juice used formerly to be employed for colouring milk, butter and cheese, but of late certain aniline dyes, mostly quite as harmless physiologically as the vegetable dyes just mentioned, are largely being used. The same aniline dyes are also employed in the manufacture of an imitation Demerara sugar from white beet sugar crystals. Aniline dyes are very frequently used by jam-makers; the natural colour of the fruit is apt to suffer in the boiling-pan, and unripe, discoloured or unsound fruit can be made brilliant and enticing by dye. The brilliant colours of cheap sugar confectionery are almost invariably produced by artificial tar-colours. Most members of this class of colouring matters are quite harmless, especially in the small quantities that are required for colouring, but there are a few exceptions, picric acid, dinitrocresol, Martius-yellow, Bismarck brown and one of the tropaeolins being distinctly poisonous. On the whole, the employment of powerful aniline dyes is an advance as compared with the use of the vicious and often highly poisonous mineral colours which Hassall met with so frequently in the middle of the 19th century. Mineral colours, with very few exceptions, are no longer used in food. Oxide of iron or ochre is still very often found in potted meats, fish sauces and chocolates; dioxide of manganese is admixed with cheap chocolates. All lump sugar of commerce is dyed. Naturally it has a yellow tint. Ultramarine is added to it and counteracts the yellowness. In the same way our linen is naturally yellow and only made to look white by the use of the blue-bag.
The same idea underlies both practices, and indeed the use of all colouring matters in manufactured articles, namely, to make them look better than they would otherwise. Within bounds, this is a reasonable and laudable desire, but it also covers many sins—poor materials, bad workmanship, faulty manufacturing and often fraud. Like sugar, flour and rice are sometimes blued to make them look white. All vinegar, most beers, all stout, are artificially coloured with burnt sugar or caramel. The line dividing the legitimate and laudable from the fraudulent and punishable is so thin and difficult to draw that neither the law nor its officers have ventured to draw it, and yet it is a matter which urgently requires regulation at the hands of the state. Practices which, when new, admit of regulation are almost ineradicable when they have become old and possessed of “vested rights”. Recognizing this, the departmental committee, like the royal commission on arsenical poisons, recommended that “means be provided, either by the establishment of a separate court of reference, or by the imposition of more direct obligation on the Local Government Board, to exercise supervision over the use of preservatives and colouring matters in foods and to prepare schedules of such as may be considered inimical to the public health.”
In close connexion with this subject is the occasional occurrence of injurious metallic impurities in food-materials. Tin chloride is used in the West Indies to produce the yellow colour of Demerara sugar. The old processes of sugar-boiling left some of the brown syrup attached to the crystals, giving them both their colour and their delicious aroma; with the introduction of modern processes affording a much greater yield Metallic impurities.of highly refined sugar, white sugar only was the result. The consumer, accustomed to yellow sugar had the colour artificially supplied by the action of the tin compound upon the sugar. At the present time all Demerara sugar, with the exception of that portion that is dyed with aniline dye, has had its colour artificially given it and consequently contains strong traces of tin. Soda-water, lemonade and other artificial aerated liquors are liable to tin or lead contamination, the former proceeding from the tin pipes and vessels, the latter from citric and tartaric acids and cream of tartar used as ingredients, these being crystallized by their manufacturers in leaden pans. Almost all “canned” goods contain more or less tin as a contamination from the tin-plate. While animal foods do not attack the tin to any great extent, their acidity being small, almost all vegetable materials, especially fruits and tomatoes, powerfully corrode the tin covering of the plate, dissolving it and becoming impregnated with tin compounds. It is quite easy to obtain tin-reactions in abundance from every grain of tinned peaches, apples or tomatoes. These tin compounds are by no means innocuous; yet poisoning from tinned vegetable foods is of rare occurrence. On the whole, tin-plate is a very unsuitable material for the storage and preservation of acid goods. Certain enamels, used for glazing earthenware or for coating metal cooking pots, contain lead, which they yield to the food prepared in them. Food materials that have been in contact with galvanized vessels sometimes are contaminated with zinc. Zinc is also not infrequently present in wines.
The effect of the application of the food laws has been entirely beneficial. Not only has the percentage proportion of samples found adulterated largely declined, but the gross forms of adulteration which prevailed in the middle of the 19th century have almost vanished. Plenty of fraud still prevails, but poisoning by reckless admixture is Results of English
Food Acts.of exceedingly rare occurrence. Whilst formerly milk was not infrequently adulterated with an equal bulk of water, few fraudulent milkmen now venture to exceed an addition of 10 or 15%. A bird’s-eye view over the effect is obtained from the following figures for England and Wales:—
| Year. | Number of Samples. | Percentage of Adulteration. | |
| Examined. | Adulterated. | ||
| 1877 | 14,706 | 2,826 | 19·2 |
| 1879 | 17,049 | 2,535 | 14·8 |
| 1884 | 22,951 | 3,311 | 14·4 |
| 1889 | 26,956 | 3,096 | 11·5 |
| 1894 | 39,516 | 4,060 | 10·3 |
| 1899 | 53,056 | 4,970 | 9·4 |
| 1904 | 84,678 | 7,173 | 8·5 |
The details of the working of the Food Acts in 1904 in England and Wales are set out in the table on the next page.
United States.—Each separate state has food laws of its own. From the 1st of January 1907 the “American National Pure Food Law,” applicable to the United States generally, came into force, without superseding the State food laws, the only effect of the National Law being the legalization of shipments of any food which complies with the provisions of the National Law into any state from another state, even though the food is adulterated within the meaning of the state law. The law applies to every person in the United States who receives food from another state and offers it for sale in the original unbroken packages in which he receives it, and if it is adulterated or misbranded within the meaning of the National Law he can be punished for having received it and offering it for sale in the original unbroken package to the same extent as the person who shipped it to him can be punished. The mere fact that he is a citizen of a state selling food within that state will not excuse him; and he will be subject to prosecution to the same extent as he would be if he uttered counterfeit money. Retailers,
