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Devoted to the Enforcement of the National and State Pure Food and Drug Laws.

Dr. J. N. Garfunkle,
Mr. Fred. L. Hoffman,

AUGUST, 1909.

Editor and Manager.
Associate Editor.

&

EDITORIAL.

HE Convention of State and National Food and Dairy Departments which meet at Denver, August 24, is the one upon which consumers look upon as health protectors. Their position is of great importance, because they must stand between the people and purveyors. of food and medicines who would attempt to palm off impure, unsanitary and injurious articles upon consumers, it is, therefore, indisputable that these men are competent, some among them expert chemists, able to make analytical examinations, as well as experienced microscopists, well acquainted with the bacteria of the various diseases, which affect cattle, sheep, swine, fowls, and fish. which renders them unfit for human food. They are also honest men, with judicial minds, who stand for the truth and hygiene, and infallible of being dishonestly and unfairly influenced in any interest for any improper purposes. There is something alarming, however, and frightfully depressing to be forced to recognize that we have come into an age when the farmers who breed the animals and raise the fruits and vegetables, which we use for food, the butchers who slaughter them, and the packers who prepare the various products for transportation and final consumption, that they are all liable to the suspicion, that they would sell diseased animals or disintegrated fruits or vegetables, and they would knowingly slaughter, pack and purvey the infected or unsanitary preparations for the daily food of an ignorant and unsuspecting population.

But the report of a committee appointed by the Secretary of Agriculture of the United States to investigate charges that the meat inspector service. is inefficiently, negligently and dishonestly conducted, shows that between July 1, 1906, when the meat inspection law went into operation and December 31, 1908, inspectors of the Bureau of Animal Industry absolutely destroyed for

food purposes 383,187 carcasses of food animal in their entirety.

During the same period the inspectors also condemned and utterly destroyed for food purposes 73,369,047 pounds of meat and meat food products. The 383,187 carcasses were all destroyed for food purposes because of their diseased conditions, which, in the opinion of the inspectors, rendered them unfit for food purposes. Of the total number 77,780 were cattle, 13,820 were calves, 23,298 were sheep, 114 were goats and 268,175 were swine. Were they all diseased when alive? Probably a very small percentage! But they have fallen prey to disease while being transported, not fed nor watered, kept starved until the butchers ax relieved their agony, and when dead, chemical preservatives have been resorted to, to make them look like meat at least until it reaches the consumer.

Of the 73 million pounds of meat and meat food products destroyed for food purposes, more than 121⁄2 million pounds were destroyed because they were sour, 44 million pounds because they were tainted, 21⁄2 million pounds because they were putrid, more than 25 million pounds because they were unclean, more than 14 million pounds (fats) because they were rancid, and the remainder amounting to about 15 million pounds because of conditions other than those named, which rendered the meat unsound, unhealthful, unwholesome, or otherwise unfit for human food. But now comes the meat trust which, as has become generally known, buys up emmense herds of cattle, slaughtered them half starved at their convenience, embalms this unfit meat for cold storage, and puts them out on the market in quantities that keep the supply below the actual and natural demand, so as to maintain the extortionate prices it fixes, for chemically preserved meat stuffs.

But it is not only a fact that meats need inspection. The flour and meal ground from our grain has been found adulterated, sugar and confectionery made from it is in some cases mixed with white earth. Alleged fruit jellies are made of glue colored and flavored, an artificial sweet is made from coal tar, with no relation whatever to the cane and the beet which are the properly authorized sources of sugar, while chemistry, the magic of the modern age, fabricates and fakes up innumerable articles of daily food from the most disgusting refuse and otherwise waste matter, and as for the liquors men drink, not a few are the most egregious swindling concoctions.

It is horrifying in its extreme that we have come into what is often boasted of as the age of modern science and enlightenment, when in order to get money, men do not scruple to drug and adulterate and poison our absolutely necessary articles of food and medicine so that they may get money all the more rapidly. So we hope that the deliberations at the Denver convention will help to eliminate the evil so long practiced upon the American public, that we may once for all be able to receive pure and wholesome foods, and thereby conserve the Nation's health.

A Resume of Ancient and

Modern Antiseptics.

By Prof. Chas. T. F. Fennel.

The use of antiseptics as preservatives on food products constitutes one of the concomitant factors in the progress of evolution. In the beginning primeval, man found the necessities of life's sustenance fit for direct consumption. After he was ushered into the world of toil, his conceptions necessarily broadened and it also marked his beginning of the search for subsistence. In the very early days demand and supply probably did not involve much effort, but as his wandering became more circumscribed to prevailing conditions and state of knowledge, the questions of supply and demand undoubtedly entered into his conceptions. The horizon of mental conceptions kept on broadening and became sharper outlined to the conditions of daily want. Observation and probably experimentation soon taught that deterioration of food product was accelerated by water and it did not require extraordinary intelligence to guard against decay. Sunlight and its associate, heat, filled the commodities of life by the removal of water for storage and future consumption.

Following up the history of the ancients, we have no difficulty in locating them, ascertaining their customs and habits, analyzing their industries, studying their daily pursuits, mode of living, their food products and their preparation. The world's progress can be followed to the minutest detail, and one must admit that all is but gradual development or evolution,-In fact, the mainspring of the whole universe. All depends upon it and all influenced by it. This being the case, we should profit by the experience of our forefathers, but it seems one of those strange laws of nature, not to profit without the taste of experience. This holds true with the use of antiseptics in food products, notwithstanding the data at our disposal antedating two thousand years before our era. We have positive knowledge that the ancients had absolute and positive information regarding the spices such as pepper, cloves, ginger, cinnamon and host of others. The value of salt in all its various applications was well known to them. They recognized their antiseptic value, but not in a single instance did any of them find application for the preservation of food products directly or indirectly. The preservation of the dead properly fitted for the return of the departed soul for time immemorial, was solely accomplished by spices. The burning of spices or mixtures of the same with salt were used for the purpose of antiseptics. We know at the present day, that a minute quantity of oil of cinnamon sprayed through a room will prove a powerful antiseptic, yet with all the general application not a single instance can be cited where the spices or salt were used internally-directly or indirectly.

Following the history of antisepsis inaugurated by the renowned Lister. we find that all processes of organic decomposition are prevented or retarded orly within certain limitations.

Processes of decomposition once commenced, not being subject to an equal amount of antiseptic, and when such decomposition has progressed to a specific stage, no antisepsis is possible. In the whole realm of antiseptics, none is more potent than bichloride of mercury, and yet its power of action is limited, uninfluenced by its own toxic properties. Arsenious acid, iodoform and many others possess antiseptic properties, but owing to their extreme poisonous character fail to find general application. No one, not even the most unscrupulous food adulterator would dare to employ them. But the next class, boric acid, borax and boron compounds although all toxic by all medical authorities, find general application in the preservation of food products.

In the scale of antiseptics, they are one and all far beneath salicylic acid, which has been prohibited by law in every civilized country in the world because it positively prevents digestion, interfering therefore, with life's functions. In order to prevent fermentation, it is necessary to use them in quantities beyond that tolerated by the human economy. Observation and experiment will prove it beyond a question of a doubt, and every effort to throw a halo of antiseptic respectability around them will utterly fail.

The advocate of preservatives has already discovered that Benzoic acid is not the antiseptic lauded as infallible. He has discarded it for Benzoate of Soda and lacks the intelligence to account for the difference of action. It will not take many years before all labels will read "No Benzoic acid or Benzoate of Soda" for the casus belli will be known to all. In the meantime, the public should be protected from death by slow poisoning.