PROFESSOR REMSEN'S APOLOGY

ROFESSOR REMSEN made an elaborate explanation that he hadn't anything to do with the benzoate of soda investigations, and did not compile the data. An explanation of this character would not have been made by the professor had it not been demanded by the

In view of all conditions, we are disposed to accept Professor Remsen's apology.

United States Department of Agriculture,

OFFICE OF THE SECRETARY,

BOARD OF FOOD AND DRUG INSPECTION.

FOOD INSPECTION DECISION 109.

THE LABELING OF WINES.

On June 30, 1909, a hearing was held before the Secretary of Agriculture and the Board of Food and Drug Inspection on the labeling of Ohio and Missouri wines. After giving full consideration to the data submitted, the Board is of the opinion that the term "wine" without modification is an appropriate name solely for the product made from the normal alcoholic fermentation of the juice of sound ripe grapes, without addition or abstraction, either prior to or subsequent to fermentation, except as such may occur in the usual cellar treatment for clarifying and aging. The addition of water or sugar, or both, to the must prior to fermentation is considered improper, and a product so treated should not be called "wine" without further characterizing it. A fermented beverage prepared from grape must by addition of sugar would properly be called a "sugar wine," or the product may be labeled in such a fashion as to clearly indicate that it is not made from the untreated grape must, but with the addition of sugar. The consumer is, under the Food and Drugs Act, entitled to know the character of the product he buys.

Evidence was offered on the preparation of "wine" from the marc. In these cases it appeared customary to add both water and sugar to the marc and sometimes to use saccharin, coloring matter, preservatives, etc., to make a salable article.

In the opinion of the Board no beverage can be made from the marc of grapes which is entitled to be called "wine" however further characterized, unless, it be by the word "imitation." The words "Pomace Wine" are not satisfactory, since the product is not a wine in any sense, but only an "imitation wine" and should be so labeled.

Approved:

W. M. HAYS,

Acting Secretary of Agriculture.

WASHINGTON, D. C., August 21, 1909.

H. W. WILEY.

F. L. DUNLAP.

GEO. P. MCCABE.

Board of Food and Drug Inspection.

Continued from page 13.

killed for food on a farm are, according to the terms of the Federal law, exempt from inspection, it is proposed by Mr. Reynolds that county slaughter-houses should be provided where farmers could drive their animals that were to be slaughtered. At these places inspection could be made, and meat from such slaughter-houses could be properly tagged to show that it had been inspected. While it is not supposed that this system could be followed in all cases, it is thought by Mr. Reynolds that in time. consumers would learn to demand the meat with the tag on it, just as they now demand the Federal inspection mark. Farmers would thus find that meat so marked had a special value, and so would finally be willing to take extra trouble to drive their animals to such slaughterhouses. Inspection of animals slaughtered at these county establishments would be protection to consumers from the danger of eating meat from diseased animals slaughtered on a farm.

In a letter Dr. Melvin states that no meat should be permitted to be sold in any community that had not been subject to competent inspection.

"Animals

slaughtered by farmers on a farm should be brought to some definite place where a fixed hour could be set for their inspection. They should be so slaughtered that the principal viscera will remain attached to the carcass and make a fairly efficient post-mortem inspection possible."

Mr. Reynolds would have all establishments inspected where fowls, birds, geese, ducks, etc., are kept in cold storage. The date of placing this poultry or game in cold storage should be placed on an undetachable label together with a stamp to indicate that they have been inspected and passed. There should be a time limit for such storage, and all animals kept beyond that time should be destroyed by an appointed inspector. Dr.

Wiley suggests that in this regulation. should also be incorporated one that would apply to fish and eggs. The temperature as to which the articles of food. are to be kept in cold storage is also an item to be considered.

With regard to the use of meats from animals that have reacted to the tuberculin test, each State that permits the use of such meat should see that in deciding what portions of the animal may be used for food that the regulations of the Bureau of Animal Industry are followed. It is to be hoped that the time will come when no animals that react to the tuberculin test will be used for food, but until that day comes the only safeguard consumers have is that no meats may be sold in a State unless they have been subject to examination by competent veterinarians, who will follow the Federal regulations.

Mr. McCabe emphasizes this in a letter in which he says that a model meat inspection law should not only follow the regulations of the Federal law as to inspections of food animals, but also the sanitary regulations prescribed by the Bureau. "The adoption of the Federal Meat Inspection Regulations as to disease and as to sanitation would do a great deal to unify the national system of in- . spection, both State and Federal, and it would undoubtedly tend to produce harmony and co-operation between the Federal and State meat authorities.

In concluding this paper the food committee again asks that this body of food officials aid the committee in placing the model meat inspection law before the legislatures of those States not already protected by adequate laws. We also ask that the following resolutions be passed. at this convention of State and national food officials:

Whereas, the United States Meat Inspection Service provides for the inspection of only such meat as is intended for

interstate trade, which comprises only a portion of the total amount consumed in the United States, and

Whereas, the uninspected slaughterhouses in a State are in many instances conducted in a very unsaintary manner, and

Whereas, animals killed in such establishments come in a large measure from small farms and dairies where the percentage of tuberculosis is large, and the statistics show that nearly twice as many animals are condemned for all causes in the smaller establishments than in the larger plants where Federal inspection is now being conducted;

Resolved, that we recommend that each State and municipality should provide for the saintary regulation of slaughter-houses and efficient veterinary ante and post-mortem inspection of all food animals slaughtered for consumption within its own limits.

ALICE LAKEY,

Chairman Food Commitee, National
Consumers' League.

Continued from page 9.

Sec. Wilson and his close followers for

saving the government humiliation and disgrace.

The officers for the ensuing year are: Geo. L. Flanders, N. Y., President; L. P. Brown, Tenn., 1st Vice President; H. Dillon, Louisiana, 2nd Vice Pres.; A. French, Minnesota, 3rd Vice Pres.; W., M. Allen, N. C., Secretary; J. Foust, Penn., Treas. ; Executive Committee, Dr. Chas. D. Woods, Me.; Dr. S. H. Crumbine, Kans.; A. N. Cook, S. D.

New Orleans is to be the next meeting place.

The chemists held their meetings at the same time as the convention fought tooth and nail, and at the final deliberations, they presented Dr. H. W. Wiley, Chief of the Bureau of Chemistry, with a loving cup by the members of the association of official Agricultural Chemists.

“Medicated Garbage” As Food.

By a vote of 57 to 42, and in the presence of the honorable geutlemen of President Roosevelt's Referee Board of Consulting Scientific Chemists, the delegates to the food convention at Denver have indorsed the report of that board on benzoate of soda, making glad the heart of every marketer of the appetizing compounds described, after governmental investigation, as factory filth-"skins, cores, stems, and surplus juice, green, mouldy, rotten, broken and generally unusable" vegetables, which are profitably merchantable only by the use of this chemical. Dr. Charles A. L. Reed not inaptly called it "medicated garbage." His criticism of Secretary Wilson's administrative ruling which admits this prepared offal into the bakeshops, delicatessen stores, and restaurants of the nation, in the form of cheap jams, jellies, fruit pie fillings, pickles, and other "bulk" preserves, the eminent Board of Referee Chemists heard with unruffled countenance and with spirits undisturbed.

For this question had not been referred to them. "You understand," Chairman Remsen said to the Convention, "that the Referee Board was to take up

only such questions as could be referred to it by the Secretary [Secretary Wilson]. We understand we had nothing to do with the administration of the pure food law." Yet the crime against the health of the whole people has been committed, and the Referee's report is made to appear its sanction.

That report settled but one narrow question, namely, that minute doses of the chemical were not deleterious when fed to young men in vigorous health for a period of two months. The referee chemists actually did not, nor did they intend as The Medical Examiner observes editorially, to form a rule applicable to the entire community, composed of infants and growing children; delicate women and sufferers from slight or serious ailments of the stomach, liver and kidneys; invalids and semi-invalids; the elderly and the aged, whose vital organs necessarily are comparatively inactive, as well as the young and extraordinarily vigorous."

That question, as well as the question about filth, was not presented to the Referee Board by Secretary Wilson. He has himself undertaken the dangerous responsibility of making the board's report upon a narrower question the basis of his general rule.

There is every reason for the belief that the rule and the Referee Board itself are illegal. Mr. Heyburn, who has been called the father of the Federal Pure Food Act, denounced the board's creation in the Senate Chamber on January 25 last, declaring that provision for it was, specifically and pointedly excluded from the act. Congress intended that there should be no such body to consider appeals from the decisions of the Government's chief chemist, "that the courts should determine these questions."

"The people who intelligently considered that measure demanded that each case should stand upon its own facts, and when the Senate expressed its final conclusion the law was so written. I want to know by what authority this board comes into existence."

The effect of the board's appointment was clearly foreseen to be pernicious. It is pernicious. It has nullified the working of the Federal law according to its plain intent. It has afforded the pretext, as President Emery declared at Denver, to establish "the same conditions in fruit and vegetable manufacture as were abolished in the meat-packing establishments by the National Meat Inspection law.

Fortunately, the Food Commissioners of fourteen States cast their votes against the resolution that meant so little in its indorsement of the Referee Chemists' report, and meant so much that is infamous in its indorsement of the arbitrary administrative ruling based thereon. If these broad-minded and incorruptable Commissioners can persuade their fourteen Legislatures, or seven, or six, or five of them, to exclude it from their borders, the inter-state commerce in medicated garbage in the guise of food for human consumption may yet be made unprofitable.-New York Times.