Report upon the law relating to the adulteration of food and suggestions as to its amendment / by Charles Alfred Swinburne.

  • Manchester and Salford Sanitary Association.
Date:
1862
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: Report upon the law relating to the adulteration of food and suggestions as to its amendment / by Charles Alfred Swinburne. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    7/8 (page 7)
    When retail vendors once knew that they were responsible for the purity of the articles sold by them, they would themselves manu¬ facture a pure article, or purchase it from one who was a respectable dealer, and did so ; so the penalty must fall either directly or indi¬ rectly upon the person guilty of the adulteration. The present act vests a discretion in town councils, courts of quarter session, &c., to appoint analysts. Such appointments, in my opinion, should not be left open to a discretion, but should be imperative upon those bodies, the appointments being confirmed by the crown, which should also have a power to augment or otherwise regulate the amount of salary to be received by the analyst, in order to ensure the appointment of a proper person, and his receiving an adequate remuneration for his services. My reason for suggesting that these appointments should be imperative, are, that many members of the bodies named, and, more especially, of town councils, may be more or less interested in preventing the appointment of such officers, while others who are not so interested may feel an apathy respecting what may injure them in¬ dividually to but a trifling extent, while again others may consider that the expense incurred by such appointments would be greater than the exigency of the occasion would justify. As before remarked, this is a matter affecting more especially the interests of the working classes, and those in an humble position in life; and, as they would have no voice in the appointment of an officer to guard their interests, such an appointment should be imperative. I consider that if the suggestions which I have made had been adopted in the present act, that it would have proved itself a valuable law and a great boon to society, instead of the useless incumbrance which it now is to the statute book. Many more suggestions might be made for the furtherance of the object in view, but I have confined myself simply to those which would, in my opinion, make the statute operative and useful. Should a law be passed which would in any way punish the evil now existing, the working of such a law will in itself suggest amendments and im¬ provements, which may in time be adopted. What is at present