Tenth annual convention of the Association of State and National Food and Dairy Departments, held at Hartford, Connecticut, July 17-20, 1906.

  • Association of State and National Food and Dairy Departments 1906 : Hartford, Connecticut)
Date:
1907
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Tenth annual convention of the Association of State and National Food and Dairy Departments, held at Hartford, Connecticut, July 17-20, 1906. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    would soon demand that all canned foods bear a label stating that the factory was clean where they were produced. A simple process of refusing to buy goods not labelled in this way, and also refusing to buy all canned goods not dated, would compel manu- facturers to so label cans. Again the consumer can win a victory. All places where food is prepared, stored, and sold need sanitary inspection. If the packing-houses need rigid inspection to ensure clean meat products, the wharves where fish are handled and the establishments where they are cured need the same. Over 100,000 tons of fish are annually handled at Boston and Gloucester. If dairies need inspection, so do bakeries, candy manufactories, jam factories,—in brief, so do all food factories. Give us this sanitary inspection and then see how quickly women will refuse to buy food produced in any but clean factories. The great sale of certain foods has been brought about largely through the assurance that they were made in factories scrupulously clean, and not touched by the human hand. A friend has told me that near her home in a small town in Western New York there stands an old tumble-down house open to the winds of heaven and the rats from out-of-doors. In this old place is stored at times quantities of apple waste from a cider- mill. Over it the rats and mice play at leisure until it is carted off to a neighboring jam factory. If necessary to inspect meat “from hoof to can,’’ it may be necessary to inspect jam from berry- patch to can. With the single exception of Indiana, no State has specific laws governing the sanitation of all food-producing establishments. Many States have laws for dairies, bakeries, and slaughter- houses, but Indiana seems to be the only one with a general law Minnesota has a specific law forbidding the sale of undressed poultry and wild fowls. Massachusetts has a law somewhat similar. I am told that New Itork has recently passed such a law since Bulletin 69 was issued. Will not the Food Commis- sioners secure us a similar law in every State? Who that has visited Washington Market in New York City can ever forget the piles of gray-green chickens exposed for sale