Otto Hehner

“ The crops sometimes take up arsenic to a slight extent, but happily the plant is more selective than man, and no serious amount of poison absorption appears to be possible. The risk of contamination is, of course, much greater with substances which, like glucose, are not further purified by crystallization, but retain whatever impurity is introduced into them. Glucose is not only used in beer, in which by legal enactments it is permitted to be used, but is also substituted for sugar in a number of food products, and is liable to carry into them its contamination. ”

“ Milk.—Milk adulteration means in modern times either addition of water, abstraction of cream, or both, or addition of chemical preservative. The old stories of the use of chalk or of sheep’s brains are fables. Owing to the wide variation to which milk is naturally subjected in composition, it is exceedingly difficult to establish beyond doubt whether any given sample is in the state in which it came from the cow or has been impoverished. The composition of cow’s milk varies with many conditions. ”

“ While for all common forms of fraud the common law is in most cases considered strong enough, special laws against the adulteration of food have been found necessary in all civilized countries. A vigorous branch of chemical literature deals with it; there exist scientific societies specially devoted to its study; laboratories are maintained by governments with staffs of highly trained chemists for its detection; and yet it not only develops and flourishes, but becomes more general, if less virulent and dangerous to health. ”

“ In reality even wider limits of variation must be reckoned with, because small farmers sell the milk of single cows, and this, as shown above, may fluctuate enormously. The Board of Agriculture, in pursuance of the powers conferred upon it by the Food Act 1899, issued in 1901 “The Sale of Milk Regulations,” which provide that where a sample of milk (not being milk sold as skimmed or separated or condensed milk) contains less than 3% of milk-fat, or less than 8·5% of non-fatty solids, it shall be presumed, until the contrary is proved, that the milk is not genuine. ”

“ It may at first sight appear strange that the person who robs milk of its most valuable portion, the cream, may prepare a legitimate article of food from the remainder, while he who to that remainder adds something to replace the fat does an illegitimate act, but it must be taken into consideration that the replacement is frequently made with fraudulent intent and that the ordinary purchaser cannot by taste or smell distinguish the adulterated from the genuine article, while there is no difficulty in recognizing skim-milk cheese. ”

“ As the limits embodied in the milk regulations were necessarily fixed at figures lower than those which are usually afforded by genuine milk, and as it is a comparatively simple matter to ascertain the percentage of fatty and non-fatty solids, a strong tendency exists to bring down commercial milk to the low limits of the regulations without coming into collision with the law. The fat of milk is its most valuable and most important constituent. The exact determination of the percentage of fat is therefore the chief problem of the milk-analyst. ”

“ For each oil the iodine absorption is a fairly constant quantity; this number, together with the determination of the amount of caustic alkali needed for complete saponification, the thermal rise with strong sulphuric acid or with bromine, the refraction of light and the specific gravity, now enable the analyst to form a fair idea of the nature of any sample under examination, and, in consequence of this advance in knowledge, adulteration of oils has much declined. The most common adulterant of the more valuable oils, like olive oil, is cotton-seed oil. ”

“ There is an altogether different class of butter adulteration which concerns itself with the substitution of other fatty matters for the whole or part of the really valuable portion of the butter-fat. Margarine is the legalized and therefore legitimate butter-surrogate, prepared by churning any suitable fat with milk into a cream, solidifying the latter by injection into cold water and working the lumps together, precisely as is done in the case of the churned cream of milk. ”

“ Manufacturers of many articles of preserved food gradually adopted the use of chemical preservatives, and at the present time the practice has become so general that it may be said that practically every person in the United Kingdom who has passed the suckling stage consumes daily more or less food containing chemical preservatives. The Food Act allows of the addition of any ingredient, not injurious to health, if it be required for the production or preparation of the food, or as an article of commerce, in a state fit for carriage. ”

“ Oils.—For very many years all oils were considered to be composed of olein, that is to say, the triglyceride of oleic acid, with small quantities of impurities; chemists, therefore, to distinguish oils of various origin, confined themselves to tests for these impurities, employing so-called colour reactions based upon the change of colour of the oil by various reagents such as sulphuric, nitric or phosphoric acids. These reactions were exceedingly indefinite and unsatisfactory and oil adulteration was prevalent and almost undiscoverable. ”

“ The excise authorities have tacitly sanctioned their employment in breweries, although the Customs and Inland Revenue Act 1885 declares that a brewer of beer shall not add any matter or thing thereto except finings or other matter or thing sanctioned by the commissioners of Inland Revenue, and although sulphites are used in all breweries, the Board of Inland Revenue do neither sanction nor interfere. An antiseptic with a pronounced taste is obviously a safer one in the hands of a non-medical person than one virtually devoid of taste, like boric, salicylic or benzoic acids or their salts. ”

“ Some day, artificially prepared foods, containing liberal quantities of matters that are not now food ingredients, may conceivably compare with natural food products, but that day is not yet, and meantime it ought to be clearly the duty of the state to see that the evil is checked. The intention which has introduced this form of adulteration may be more or less beneficent, but in practice it is almost wholly evil.
A similar criticism applies to the continually extending use of colouring matter in food. Civilized man requires his food not only to be healthy and tasty. ”

“ In well-made butter there are contained about 85% of pure milk-fat, from 12 to 13% of water, and 2 or 3% of curd and albumen, milk-sugar or its product of transformation—lactic acid,—and phosphates and other milk-salts. In some kinds of butter, Russian for instance, the percentage of water is rather less. Generally, by churning at a low temperature, a drier, at higher temperatures a wetter, butter is obtained. The curd must be got rid of as completely as practicable if the product is to have reasonable keeping properties. ”

“ 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. ”

“ During the period which has elapsed since chemically preserved food has been used, the mortality as a whole has declined, and while this naturally cannot be put to the credit of the preservatives but is largely due to better feeding in consequence of the introduction of cheaper foods, which are rendered possible to some extent by the use of preservatives, it conclusively establishes the fact that no obvious harm has been done to the health of the community. ”

“ A certain latitude in the making up of physicians’ prescriptions must necessarily be allowed, but much too frequently the reasonable limit of a 10% error over or under the amount of drug prescribed is exceeded. Certain perishable drugs, such as sweet spirits of nitre, or others liable to contain from their mode of manufacture metallic impurities, form the subjects of frequent prosecutions. The element of intentional fraud which characterizes many forms of food adulteration is happily generally absent in the case of drugs. ”

“ Owing to this subdivision of the fat, and perhaps to the composition of the fat itself, butter is a more digestible fatty article of food than lard or oil. It is not possible by mechanical means to remove the whole of the water and curd of the milk from the butter; indeed “overworking” the butter with the object of removing the water as completely as possible ruins the structure to such an extent as to make the product unmerchantable. ”

“ The courts have held that when deviations are the result of negligence or ignorance the vendor is nevertheless liable to punishment. Thus, when a vendor omits to stir up the contents of a pan so as to prevent the cream from rising to the top, he may be punished, if by such omission the milk becomes altered in composition so as no longer to comply with the regulations; or, when a farmer allows an undue interval between the milkings whereby the composition of the milk may be affected, he may be liable for the consequences. ”

“ It is difficult to say in the present state of the law whether such admixture amounts to adulteration. It was clearly made originally for fraudulent purposes, but usage and high court decisions have gradually given the practice an air of respectability. Vinegar of sorts is also made from a glucose liquor produced by the action of sulphuric acid upon maize or other starchy material, and is, in its turn, exposed to arsenic contamination. There is hardly a chemical substance which has directly or indirectly come into contact with sulphuric acid that is not at times arsenical. ”

“ Thus it is well-nigh impossible to collect butter from farms in Australia or New Zealand far distant from the coast without the addition of some chemical preservative. Heavily salted goods no longer appeal to the modern palate, and, with the progress of specialized labour, the inhabitants, especially of great towns, have become accustomed to resort to manufactured provisions instead of the home-made and home-cooked food. ”

“ Flour and bread as sold in England are almost invariably genuine. The old forms of adulteration, such as the use of alum for the production of a white but indigestible loaf from bad flour, have disappeared. The only admixture which has been met with during recent years is maize-meal in American produce. This is of inferior food value to wheat-meal. ”

“ Attempts to compel dairymen to work up to any stated minimum of fat have failed, the English courts holding that cream is not an article that has any standard of quality, but varies with the character of the cows from which the milk is obtained and the food on which they are fed. Therefore, as regards the most important portion of cream, the amount of fat, adulteration does not exist unless there is a substitution for the milk-fat by an emulsified foreign fat, but cases of this description are exceedingly rare. ”

“ 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. ”