[Report 1953] / Medical Officer of Health, Staffordshire County Council.

  • Staffordshire (England). County Council.
Date:
1953
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: [Report 1953] / Medical Officer of Health, Staffordshire County Council. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    The remaining 2,103 samples, taken together, show an increase of 18.5% over the corresponding samples received last year. Consisting almost entirely of County Council samples, they are grouped und^r the various headings shown in Table I. Increases occurred in the number of water and effluent samples, atmospheric pollution samples and milk samples to be tested for hypochlorite. An attempt has been made in the following paragraphs to give a very brief account of the nature of the work undertaken in the County Chemical Laboratory. The main work consists of the chemical examination of samples submitted under the Food and Drugs Act, 1938, and the various Orders relating to food made under the Defence (Sale of Food) Regulations, 1943. The most important of these Orders is the Labelling of Food Order, but standards for many groups of foods have been set up under the Food Standards Order. The relevant provisions of the Food and Drugs Act require that : (a) nothing shall be added to food for sale so as to render it injurious to health or to any drug so as to affect injuriously its quality or potency; (h) nothing shall be abstracted from food so as to affect injurious^ its nature, substance or quality ; (c) no food or drug shall be sold to the prejudice of the purchaser which is not of the nature, or not of the sub¬ stance, or not of the quality demanded by the purchaser ; (d) certain specified substances must not be added to milk and milk is presumed to be adulterated, until the contrary is proved, when it fails to reach certain minimum standards of composition. Briefly, the Analyst has to determine whether the food examined is what the ordinary purchaser asked for, expected or should have expected to get and that it had not been tampered with in any way or contaminated during the processes of production, manufacture, handling or storage. The Labelling of Food Order adds to this task by demanding that any pre-packed food sold by retail must carry on its label a list of in¬ gredients in the order of the proportion in which they were used in the preparation of the food in question. The Food Standard Orders add further to the Analyst’s work by laying down definite standards of composition for the foods to which they apply. The welcome publicity given to the increasing use of science and scientific control in food production and manufacture has one very misleading result if it gives the impression that the Public Analyst’s task has, thereby, been made easier. There is the possibility that the increas¬ ing use of toxic chemicals in agriculture may give rise to toxic residues in food, and chemicals used to control insect infestation of stored foodstuffs may have a similar effect. The food industry is continually adding to its food emulsifiers, stabili.sers, anti-staling agents and other “aids”. The increased use of machinery and mechanical methods may, on occasion, give rise to metallic and other contamination of foodstuffs. The sum of all this means more work for the Food and Drugs Authority’s laboratory. Analytical methods must be kept under review and, when possible, improved. Intricate and expensive apparatus, comparable with that used in industrial laboratories, must be obtained where its use can be justified, and scientifically qualified staff of the high standard required must be engaged for this work.