Food Adulteration and Its Detection. Jesse P. Battershall
since, a manufacturer of wine at Rheims secured for his champagne, which was chiefly consumed in Würtemberg, a high reputation, on account of the unusually exhilarating effects following its use. Suspicion being at length aroused, Liebig made a chemical examination of the article, and found that it was at least unique in its gaseous composition, being charged with one volume of carbonic acid gas and two volumes of nitrous oxide, or “laughing gas.” These early attempts to control and punish adulteration, while often possessing interest on account of their quaintness, are chiefly important, as being the precursors of the protective legal measures which exist in more modern times.
In 1802 the Conseil de Salubrité was established in Paris, and this body has since developed into numerous health boards, to whom the French are at present mainly indebted for what immunity from food falsification they enjoy. A very decided advance upon all preceding methods to regulate the public supply of food was signalised in 1874 by the organisation in England of the Society of Public Analysts, who formulated a legal definition of adulteration, and issued the standards of purity which articles of general consumption should meet. This society was supported in its valuable services by the enactment, in 1875, of the Sale of Food and Drugs Act, which, with the amendment added in 1879, seems to embrace all necessary safeguards against the offences sought to be suppressed. The results of their work are tabulated as follows:—
| Year. | Samples Examined. | Samples Adulterated. | Percentage of Adulterated. |
| 1875–6 | 15,989 | 2,895 | 18·10 |
| 1877 | 11,943 | 2,371 | 17·70 |
| 1878 | 15,107 | 2,505 | 16·58 |
| 1879 | 17,574 | 3,032 | 17·25 |
| 1880 | 17,919 | 3,132 | 17·47 |
Of the total number of samples tested, the classification of adulterations is as below:—
| Per cent. | |
| Milk | 50·98 |
| Butter | 5·73 |
| Groceries | 12·90 |
| Drugs | 2·52 |
| Wine, spirits, and beer | 15·18 |
| Bread and flour | 2·68 |
| Waters (including mineral) | 9·18 |
| Sundries | 0·83 |
More recent data concerning the falsification of food in Great Britain are as follows:—
| Year. | Samples Tested. | Number Adulterated. | Per cent. of Adulterated. |
| 1881 | 17,823 | 2,495 | 14·0 |
| 1882 | 19,439 | 2,916 | 15·0 |
| 1883 | 14,900 | 2,453 | 16·4 |
Of the samples of spirits and beer examined, about 25 per cent. were adulterated.
The results of the work done at the Paris Municipal Laboratory are the following:—
| Year. | Samples Tested. | Good. | Passable. | Bad. | |
| Not Injurious. | Injurious. | ||||
| 1881 | 6,258 | 1,565 | 1,523 | 2,608 | 562 |
| 1882 | 10,752 | 2,707 | 2,679 | 3,822 | 1,544 |
| 1883 | 14,686 | — | — | — | — |
The American characteristic of controlling their own personal affairs, and the resulting disinclination to resort to anything savouring of parental governmental interference, has probably had its effect in retarding early systematic action in the matter of adulteration. Sporadic attempts to secure legislative restrictions have, it is true, occasionally been made, but the laws passed were almost invariably of a specific nature, designed to meet some isolated case, and were destined to share the fate of most legislation of the kind—the particular adulteration being for the nonce suppressed, the law became practically a dead letter. Subsequent effort to obtain more comprehensive laws inclined to the other extreme, and the enactments secured were so general in scope, and so deficient in details, that loopholes were inadvertently allowed to remain, through which the crafty adulterator often managed to escape.
The present food legislation in the United States was to some extent anticipated in 1848 by an Act of Congress to secure the purity of imported drugs. In this enactment these are directed to be tested by the standards established by the various official pharmacopœias; twenty-three are specifically enumerated, the most important being Peruvian bark and opium. The Act is still in force. All previous efforts to regulate the quality of our food supply culminated in 1877 in formal action being taken by several of the State Boards of Health, at whose instance laws against adulteration were formulated, and chemists commissioned to collect and examine samples of alimentary substances, and furnish reports on the subject. These may be found in the publications of the same, notably in the volumes issued by the New York, Massachusetts, Michigan, and New Jersey Boards. The service rendered to the public by these investigations is almost incalculable, and the annual reports containing the results of the same are fraught with interest. For the first time we are placed in possession of trustworthy statistics, indicating the extent of food sophistication in this country.
The annual report of the New York City Board of Health for the year 1885 furnishes the following statistics:—
| Milk examined | 7,006 | samples. |
| Adulterated milk destroyed | 1,701 | quarts. |