During the past year our inspectors have visited all the principal cities of the state, in their duties of inspecting the food and dairy products and have been in every county in the state-and in many of the large cities many times-but when it is remembered that Illinois has 16,000 retail grocers, 4,000 manufacturers and packers of food, 300,000 dairies, 700 creameries, and 14 milk condensaries, not taking into consideration booths, depots, stations and buffets and dining cars, and that it is the first state in the Union in the production, manufacture and sale of all this vast product, and when we further remember that Illinois, on account of her broad prairies and fertile valleys, she being located almost centrally between the two great oceans, and peculiarly adapted to the growth and production of the very best and most wholesome food products pertaining to the temperate zone, and Chicago, being the distributing point of all this vast food product, we can then see and understand how necessary it is that Illinois should have a first-class food and dairy law, and have the law rigidly enforced so as to protect the manufacture and sale of this vast food product.

This cannot be effectually done with the present force of inspectors and chemists, nor with the small appropriation allowed the State Food Department.

When we consider that the state of New York has allowed to its Food and Dairy Department $150,000; that Pennsylvania is allowed $175,000; that Ohio is allowed $90,000, and that these states have unlimited. authority to appoint all necessary inspectors, and in addition to all this liberal appropriations are made for the employment of attorneys to look after the prosecutions for violations of these laws and take care of the legal work of the department, and then, when we

compare those appropriations with the appropriation allowed by the General Assembly for the Illinois State Food Department, we can understand why it is the states named, and many of the other states not named can do so much more work than Illinois, and in addition to all this these states have had stringent state food laws under which to carry on their work, whereas Illinois has never had a revision of her state food laws, and many of the present laws are so obsolete and impracticable that it is hard for even lawyers to understand whether the former laws were intended to repeal the later ones, and even our courts are, in many cases, at a loss to know under which section of these statutes the defendant should be apprehended and tried.

Therefore, to obviate this trouble and meet these objections, I have prepared an entire revision of our state food law, modeling the same after the national food law.

If the State Food Department can secure this revision of our state food law, then the work of enforcing the law will be made comparatively easy.

As stated in our last annual report the time has come when the manufacturer and jobber, as well as the retail dealer, should be held to a strict accountability for putting on the markets of the state articles of food that are not properly labeled, stamped or branded, so as to inform the purchaser, or purchasers, as well as all who may be interested, just what the goods are, as well as to punish them for putting on the markets of the state for consumption foods that are falsely labeled, stamped or branded or not prepared in conformity with our state food laws.

The only way in which this can be done and protect the people in their lives, health and pocketbooks is to hold these manufacturers, packers, jobbers and 23250