Food adulteration

“ The provisions of the food laws and of the proposed National Pure Food Law apply principally to adulteration by addition and to adulteration by taking away. There is a third class of adulteration. Foods may be unfit for consumption by reason of inferior methods of production or preparation, carelessness in handling, inherent disease, and the spoilage to which foods are subject by their very nature. Many foods at certain stages of production or preparation are unfit for consumption—a green peach and new whiskey. ”

“ As a result of the publicity lately given to the subject of food adulteration, a popular impression has been produced that any substance employed as an adulterant of, or a substitute for another, is to be avoided per se. Perhaps the common belief that for all purposes cotton-seed oil is inferior to olive oil, and oleomargarine to butter, is the most striking illustration of this tendency. ”

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Food Adulteration; What we eat and should not eat. This book should be in every family, where it ought to create a sentiment against the adulteration of food products, and demand a law to protect consumers against the many health-destroying adulterations offered as food. ”

“ The claim that manufacturers are often forced into adulteration by the necessities of unfair trade competition possesses more weight—an honest dealer cannot as a rule successfully compete with a dishonest one—and has undoubtedly influenced many of the better class to [2] co-operate in attempts to prevent the practice. The general feeling of uncertainty which exists in the public mind concerning the actual extent and importance of food adulteration is probably to be ascribed to two causes. ”

“ On a recent trip to Germany, Doctor Harvey Wiley, the pure-food expert, heard an allegory with reference to the subject of food adulteration which, he contends, should cause Americans to congratulate themselves that things are so well ordered in this respect in the United States. ”

“ Many foods which are artificially manufactured have been adulterated to such an extent as to be almost unfit for food, or even harmful. One of the commonest adulterations is the substitution of grape sugar (glucose) for cane sugar. Glucose, however, is not a harmful adulterant. It is used largely in candy making. Flour and other cereal foods are sometimes adulterated with some cheap substitutes, as bran or sawdust. Alum is sometimes added to make flour whiter. Probably the food which suffers most from adulteration is milk, as water can be added without the average person being the wiser. ”

“ In the case of confectionery, we find that it is to be deemed to be adulterated if it contains certain specified substances 'or other ingredient deleterious or detrimental to health.' So, under § 7, subdivision 6th, there may be adulteration of food in case the article consists in whole or in part of 'any portion of an animal unfit for food, whether manufactured or not, or if it is the product of a diseased animal, or one that has died otherwise than by slaughter.' In United States v. ”

“ Whoever by himself or by his servant or agent, or as the servant or agent of any other person, sells, exchanges, or delivers, or has in his custody or possession with intent to sell or exchange, or exposes or offers for sale or exchange, adulterated milk, or milk to which water or any foreign substance has been added, or milk produced from cows fed on the refuse of distilleries or from sick or diseased cows, shall for a first offence be punished by fine of not less than fifty nor more than two hundred dollars ”

“ 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. ”

“ England and France early passed laws to guard against the adulteration of bread, and as far back as the days of Edward the Confessor public punishment was provided for the brewers of bad ale. The legal status of adulteration is largely a matter of statute, varying with each governmental body which attacks the subject. Food is declared adulterated if there is added to it a substance which depreciates or injuriously affects it ”

“ Foods are also rendered impure or weakened through adulteration, the watering of milk being a familiar example. The manufacture of jellies, preserves, sirups, and various kinds of pickles and condiments has perhaps afforded the largest field for adulterations, although it is possible to adulterate nearly all of the leading articles of food. ”

“ It is far easier to substantiate the fact of the adulteration than it is to produce the offender in court and secure his conviction. Numerous cases are on record illustrating the peculiar contingencies which at times arise. Probably with the best intention, a milk vendor labelled his wagon, “Country skimmed milk, sold as adulterated;” an inspector bought a sample, not noticing the label, and the [8] magistrate convicted the vendor, doubtless on the ground that due attention had not been directed to the advertisement. ”

“ The most usual excuses advanced by dishonest traders, when a case of adulteration has been successfully brought home to them—guilty knowledge being also established—are, that they are compelled to resort to the misdeed by the public demand for cheap commodities, that the addition is harmless, or actually constitutes an improvement, as is asserted to be the case when chicory is added to coffee, or that it serves as a preservative, as was formerly alleged to be the fact when vinegar was fortified with sulphuric acid. ”

“ Several well-authenticated facts have convinced me that the adulteration of wine with substances deleterious to health, is certainly practised oftener than is, perhaps, suspected; and it would be easy to give some instances of very serious effects having arisen from wines contaminated with deleterious substances, were this a subject on which I meant to speak. ”

“ When the very delicate article of CORN STARCH, which is so largely used in the family for food, and especially for children and invalids, is adulterated with poisonous and unhealthy substances, it becomes very important that every housekeeper should be cautious and know what kind they use. ”

“ The fact that the only reliable results of food investigation have, until recently, been confined to purely scientific journals, and therefore not prominently brought to public notice, is another explanation of the lack of creditable information which generally prevails concerning this species of sophistication.
The adulteration of alimentary substances was practised in the civilised countries of Europe at a very remote date, and the early history of the art, mainly collated by Prof. Blyth in his valuable work on food, [1] is replete with interest. ”

“ With regard to adulterations of food, the only form of such adulteration found in this country, which has any special interest from the sanitary point of view, pertains to milk. This adulteration is in most cases the dilution of the milk by water, and this is very common in large cities. The danger from the use of such milk is by no means confined to infants, and it is probable that a larger proportion of the typhoid fever, diphtheria, scarlet fever, cholera infantum, and diarrhoeal diseases in our cities is due either directly or indirectly to the milk-supply than is now even suspected. ”

“ If the admission of small quantities is permitted, then there can never be any agreement among experts or others respecting the magnitude of the small quantity, and continued litigation and disagreement must follow. On the other hand, when the harmfulness of any substance which it is proposed to add to food is established and no reason for its use can be given other than the convenience, carelessness, or indifference of the manufacturer, the exclusion of such bodies entirely from food products follows as a logical sequence and a hygienic necessity. ”

“ The sophistications to which tea is exposed have received the careful attention of chemists, but not to a greater extent than the importance of the subject merits; indeed, it is safe to assert that no article among alimentary substances has been, at least in past years, more subjected to adulteration. The falsifications which are practised to no inconsiderable extent may be conveniently divided into three classes. ”

“ To sell oleomargarine under its own distinctive name, with no credit borrowed from butter, is not an adulteration. But to supply sugar made from corn-starch for the ordinary sugar made from cane-juice, or to deal out milk-and-water or skim-milk for entire milk, is an adulteration—a violation of the right of the consumer to obtain his food on his own discretion." The plea that may be made, that the adulterant is as wholesome as the real article "is not to be heard at all; it belongs to the consumer to judge for himself what he will provide for his own table." ”

“ 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. There are numerous references to adulteration in the classics. ”

“ It is believed that a more careful study of the food he consumes will benefit man in many ways. It will lead to a wider public interest in the problem of the purity of food and the magnitude of the crime committed against mankind in the debasement, adulteration, and sophistication of food articles. ”

“ As the author of the “Oracle of Health and Long Life” observes, in a note to page 31, “it is no doubt to the unprincipled adulterations of food, spirits, malt liquors, &c. that a great number of the sudden deaths, which are constantly happening in and about the metropolis, is assignable. The adulteration, it is true, is not sufficient to cause instant death, but it operates slowly, and silently, and imperceptibly ”

“ Whoever adulterates, for the purpose of sale, any liquor used or intended for drink, with Indian cockle, vitriol, grains of paradise, opium, alum, capsicum, copperas, laurel-water, logwood, Brazil wood, cochineal, sugar of lead, or any other substance which is poisonous or injurious to health, and whoever knowingly sells any such liquor so adulterated, shall be punished by imprisonment in the State prison not exceeding three years ”

“ Passing in quick review the federal legislation relating to pure foods, it will be found that not until 1906 was any legislation secured which authorized the inspection and examination of foods by federal officers and placing upon adulteration an adequate penalty. For seventeen years the people of the nation had urged congress to pass a bill that would meet the many abuses that had arisen in the adulteration of food and dairy products. ”

“ To label the adulterator of food as a criminal would, in the majority of cases, be too harsh a sentence, but in the worst forms of adulteration—those in which food that is positively bad is made to appear good—he more than deserves the title. Although in the larger proportion of instances the actual pecuniary loss inflicted upon the consumer by the sale of adulterated food may be but trifling, the loss suffered by the community collectively through various forms of petty frauds of this nature reaches an enormous total in a year. ”

“ Pure air and pure water are required by natural and common consent as necessities of existence; but the purity of the food we consume is no less a paramount condition of physical well-being. Food-impurities may be ranked under diverse heads. Adulteration of foods is thus a common cause of illness. The food, rendered of poor quality, does not contain the necessary amount of nutritious material; or it may impart disease from its being impregnated with matters foreign to its composition, and which have been added thereto for purposes of unfair trade-profit. ”

“ There is much talk of the adulteration of food; if by adulteration we mean deterioration, that clearly is a thing to be denounced as a cheating process of selling one thing for another fraudulently. But the mixing or changing food with the knowledge of the customer, substituting the artificial for the natural, may occasionally be beneficial. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Everyone knows that the adulteration of food is enormous. If anyone has any doubts let him read the reports of the chemists upon a product whose adulteration is easy, milk, for example. His doubts will disappear rapidly ”

“ Political considerations, such as the desire to protect the food-producers of a country, may affect legislation. Thus adulteration may be so defined as to include foreign products, which otherwise might be treated as unobjectionable. Food-preservatives have a very extensive use, which often constitutes adulteration. ”