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    "source_title": "Encyclopaedia Britannica (1926)",
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    "chunk_id": "1926:food pure:e285f299d77b",
    "title": "FOOD, PURE",
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    "verified_text": "it is only within recent years that the transfer of the manufacture of food from the home to the factory, and the transportation of food for greater and greater distances, have made it necessary for governments to promote systematically and scientifically the purity and truthful labelling of food products. the purity of foods, drugs and other commodities was every- where adversely affected by the conditions prevailing during the world war. there was a great increase in the practice of adul- teration, and a marked falling off in the quality of manufactured foods. the use of substitutes and inferior products in times of shortage is a necessity; the subsequent restoration of higher standards is slow. borax, formaldehyde and other food preserv- atives were tolerated to an almost unlimited extent in some european countries during the troubled period attending the war, and the users of these substances, after a few years of unmolested privilege, have been unwilling to give way. scientific developmenits—one phase of the movement for pure food was a proposal by the newly organised international union of pure and applied chemistry to study the practice of conserving foods by chemical means—a subject extensively investigated in the united states between 1904 and 1912. a report upon the laws governing the use of chemical preserva- tives in foods was presented at the fourth meeting of the inter- national union of pure and applied chemistry at cambridge, england, in june 1923 (comptes-rendus de la quatri¢me con- ference internationale de la chimie, p. 133-6). the trend of public and scientific opinion at the present time is toward the complete elimination of chemical preservatives from foods. in addition to their own injurious action, food preservatives dis- guise the effects of putrcfaction, and their use in many cases has put a premium upon the unsanitary handling of foods. certain advocates, notably prof. e. paterno of the university of rome, have defended the use of preservatives. it has been asserted that the extensive consumption of meats, preserved by boric acid or formaldehyde, as an exigency of war, produced no injur- ious effects. the lack of cold-storage facilities, such as are every- where provided in the united states, has been advanced in many countries as an argument for the use of chemicals in pre- serving perishable foods. legislation to exclude completely all foreign chemicals from foods has been held to be inconsistent so long as copper compounds, arsenates and other substances are permitted in agriculture as insecticides, fungicides and dis- infectants, since traces of these nearly always occur in the fruits and vegetables so treated. nevertheless opinion among hygien- ists, manufacturers and the general public is decidedly adverse to the use of chemical preservatives. it has been suggested that an important factor in the increase of certain diseases is the presence of chemical preservatives and metallic poisons in foods. british conunittee on preservatives—in england the minister of health appointed on july 7 1923 a committee on the use of preservatives and colouring matters in food. in accordance with their recommendations the minister of health announced on feb. 17 1925 a draft of rules and orders that completely excludes from foods boric acid, salicylic acid, formaldehyde, food, pure fluorides and all other chemical preservatives except benzoic acid and sulphur dioxide, which are permitted in minimum amounts for preserving a limited number of foods and beverages. according to these regulations a food preservative is defined as:— _ any substance which is capable of inhibiting, retarding or arrest- ing the process of fermentation, acidification, or other decomposition of food or of masking any of the evidences of any such process or of neutralising the acid gencrated by any such process; but does not include common salt (sodium chloride), saltpetre (sodium or potas- .gium nitrate), sugars, acetic acid or vinegar, alcohol or potable spirits, spices, essentia! oils or any substance added to food by the process of curing known as smoking, it was objected that the new rules would operate to the detri- ment of both the trade and the general public on account of storage difficulties and of the increased price at which it would be necessary to sell food under the changed conditions. the new british public health (preservatives, etc., in food) regu- lations of 1925 are to come into operation on jan. 1 1927 with slight extensions of this date in the case of butter, cream and a few other products. standardisation.—a basic requirement in pure food control is the establishment of official standards of purity. the differences of opinion which prevail with regard to what constitutes pure sausage, marmalade, chocolate, catsup, ice cream and numerous other foods would make the task of the analyst an impossible one unless he had available certain recognised standards which are accepted as just by the trade and by regulatory officials. in germany, great britain and the british colonies much valu- able pioneer work has been done by the public analysts toward establishing standards of composition for many articles of food. in the united states a joint committee of nine experts selected equally from the u.s. bureau of chemistry, the association of of- ficial agricultural chemists and the association of dairy, food and drug officials, by joint conferences with the trade, has estab- lished definitions and standards for a large variety of foods. foop laws in the united states in the united states the control of foods is exercised by the federal govt. of the united states under the federal food and idrugs act, the meat inspection act, the tea inspection act and certain acts relating to specific products such as filled cheese, filled milk, butter and mixed flour. forty-seven of the 48 states of the union have some form of food control legislation. a num- ber of states have laws which follow the general principles of the federal food and drugs act, but other states have laws differ- ing very materially from that act. in some states foods are controlled under the general provisions of one act, in other states they are controlled under a number of acts relating to specific food products. each state has complete control of the foods produced and consumed within that state. the federal govt. has control of foods shipped into interstate or foreign commerce. the federal food and drugs act, approved on june 30 1906 and amended in 1912, 1913 and 1919, provides in general that all foods coming within its jurisdiction be prepared in a cleanly manner from pure and wholesome materials; free from any added substances which might render them injurious to health; not labelled or sold under representations which are in any manner deceptive. food packages must bear a plain and conspicuous statement of the quan- tity of the contents. the meat inspection act, approved on june 30 1906, provides that every establishment in which cattle, sheep, swine or goats are slaughtered or their carcasses are wholly or in part canned, cured, smoked, salted, packed, rendered or otherwise prepared, for trans- portation or sale as articles of interstate or foreign commerce, shall be inspected under the act. the inspection begins when live animals are received for slaughter, and includes a thorough ante- mortem and post-mortem examination, a rigid inspection of products such as smoked or cured meats, lard and by-products, and a final inspection when meats and their products leave the inspected estab- lishments. the tea inspection act of march 2 1897, amended on may 16 1908, provides that all shipments of tea offered for entry into the united states shall be inspected to sce that they comply with the standards of quality and purity adopted each year by a board of tea experts appointed by the secretary of agriculture. every consign- ment of tea offered for entry into the united states is inspected, and only such tea admitted as complies with the standards. food poisoning the bureau of chemistry in the enforcement of the federal food and drugs act endeavours to see that out of the great volume and variety of foods coming from other countries only such as comply with the act are allowed to enter the united states. shipments in violation of the food and drugs act are denied entry into the united states, and if not exported within three months are destroyed. if the violation is a form of misbranding that can be entirely cor- rected by relabelling, the importer is permitted to relabel the ship- ment, after which it may be admitted to the country, if the relabel- ling is correct. foods that are harmful to health, however, are not admitted to the united states and must be exported or destroyed. for the control of interstate commerce two forms of action are provided by the federal food and drugs act—criminal prosecution against the party responsible for the violation, and seizure of any shipments of adulterated or misbranded foods or drugs found in interstate or foreign commerce. both actions may be invoked when necessary. under the federal food and drugs act more than 14,000 cases, including both criminal prosecutions and seizures, have been terminated in the federal courts and the results published in the form of notices of judgment. this number represents only those instances of flagrant misbranding or adulteration in which court action was necessary to check the practice. countless minor viola- tions have been corrected by serving notices on the firms responsible without recourse to formal legal action. most of the grosser forms of adulteration and misbranding which prevailed at the time of the enactment of the federal food and drugs act and meat inspection act in 1906 have been eliminated as general trade practices. occasional sporadic in- stances on the part of widely scattered dealers to adulterate and misbrand in the old way are still detected at intervals, but such practices are no longer general. new and more subtle forms of adulteration, however, are being detected. as a result of the effects of pure food legislation by the federal and state governments, and by the application of the principles of sanitary science in the food industries, very great improvement was made in the purity of food in the markets of the united states between tgto and 1925. no other classes of merchandise are to-day, on the whole, so free from adulteration and misbranding as foods. bre_iography.—pure foods. h. a. macewan, food inspection, (3rd ed., london, 1922); g. r. leighton, botulism and food preserva- tion (london, 1923); w. g. savage, canned foods 1n_ relation to tfealth (milroy lectures, 1923) (cambridge, 1923); g. r. leighton, pocket handbook of meat inspection. a guide to the public heaith— meat-regulations—scotland, 1924 (edinburgh and london, 1924); g. w. m, williams, chemistry in relation to food (london, 1924); a. g. woodman, food analysis (2nd ed., new york, 1924); r. edelmann, text-book of heat iivgiene (5th ed., london- u.s.a., 1925). a.e, leach and a. l. winton, food inspection and analysis (4th ed., new york and london, 1920); h. w. wiley, foods and their adulteration (3rd ed., philadelphia, 1917); h. c. sherman, food products (2nd ed., new york, 1924); c. t. and a. c. hunter, hygienic fundamentals of food handling (baltimore, 1924). sce also the following british government publications: ministry of health: final report of the departmental committee on ihe use of preservatives and colouring matter in food (london, 1924); draft rules and orders, 1925, public health, england: draft of the public health (preserva- tives, etc., in food) regulations (1925); draft rules and orders, 1925, public health, scotland: draft of regilations with respect to pre- servatives, etc., in food, proposed by the scottish board of health (1925). (c. a. br.)",
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