however, can protect themselves from prosecution when they sell goods in original unbroken packages by procuring a written guarantee, signed by the person from whom they received the goods, such guarantee stating that the goods are not adulterated within the meaning of the National Law. The guarantee must also contain the name and address of the wholesale vendor, but unless the parties signing the guarantee are residents of the United States the guarantee is void. The law affects all foods shipped from one state or district into another and also all foods intended for export to a foreign country. It also affects all food products manufactured or offered for sale in any territory or the District of Columbia, wherever such foods may have been produced. The law does not affect foods manufactured and sold wholly within one state, nor such as have been shipped from another state but not in the original package. While thus the National Food Law is mainly intended to regulate the food traffic between the different states, and leaves to the states freedom to regulate their internal traffic, it must gradually tend to unify the present complicated state food legislation, and it is therefore here more usefully considered than would be the separate state laws.
| Samples Examined. |
Found Adulterated. |
Percentage Adulterated. | |
| Milk . . . . . | 36,413 | 4,031 | 11·1 |
| Butter. . . . | 15,124 | 867 | 5·7 |
| Cheese . . . . | 2,176 | 20 | 0·9 |
| Margarine . . . | 1,169 | 83 | 7·1 |
| Lard . . . . . | 2,489 | 4 | 0·2 |
| Bread. . . . | 473 | 1 | 0·2 |
| Flour . . . . . | 476 | 3 | 0·6 |
| Tea . . . . | 486 | . | . . |
| Coffee . . . . | 2,550 | 161 | 6·3 |
| Cocoa . . . . | 477 | 42 | 8·8 |
| Sugar. . . . | 901 | 49 | 5·4 |
| Mustard . . . . | 812 | 39 | 4·8 |
| Confectionery and Jam . | 1,303 | 72 | 5·5 |
| Pepper . . . . | 2,393 | 43 | 1·8 |
| Wine . . . . . | 308 | 54 | 17·5 |
| Beer . . . . . | 1,065 | 75 | 7·0 |
| Spirits . . . . | 6,938 | 832 | 12·0 |
| Drugs:— | |||
| Camphorated Oil . | 395 | 24 | 6·1 |
| Sweet Spirit of Nitre . | 243 | 66 | 27·2 |
| Sulphur . . . | 131 | 7 | 5·3 |
| Cream of Tartar . | 441 | 88 | 20·0 |
| Glycerine . . . | 192 | 21 | 10·9 |
| Rhubarb preparations . | 96 | 5 | 5·2 |
| Seidlitz Powders . | 81 | 3 | 3·7 |
| Linseed . . . | 70 | 1 | 1·4 |
| Magnesia . . . | 48 | 9 | 18·8 |
| Mercury preparations . | 28 | 4 | 14·3 |
| Cod Liver Oil . . | 245 | 7 | 2·9 |
| Iron Pills . . . | 16 | .. | .. |
| Compound Liquorice Powder . . . |
111 |
2 |
1·8 |
| Tincture of Iodine . | 23 | 4 | 17·4 |
| Other Drugs . . | 1,124 | 124 | 11·0 |
| Total Drugs . . . | 3,214 | 365 | 11·3 |
| Other Articles:— | |||
| Ginger . . . . | 704 | .. | .. |
| Syrup and Treacle . | 183 | 8 | 4·4 |
| Baking Powder . . | 281 | 11 | 3·9 |
| Vinegar. . . | 773 | 57 | 7·4 |
| Arrowroot . . . | 467 | 3 | 0·6 |
| Oatmeal. . . | 359 | .. | .. |
| Sago. . . . | 227 | 14 | 6·2 |
| Olive Oil. . . | 306 | 9 | 2·9 |
| Dripping and Fat . | 85 | 1 | 1·2 |
| Sundries. . . . | 2,496 | 329 | 13·2 |
| Total other Articles . | 5,881 | 432 | 7·3 |
| All Articles. . . | 84,678 | 7,173 | 8·5 |
The definition of adulteration as set forth in sec. 7 is as follows:—“For the purpose of this act an article shall be deemed to be adulterated: In the case of drugs: (1) If, when a drug is sold under or by a name recognized in the United States Pharmacopoeia or National Formulary, it differs from the standard of strength, quality or purity, as determined by the test laid down in the United States Pharmacopoeia or National Formulary official at the time of investigation; provided that no drug defined in the United States Pharmacopoeia or National Formulary shall be deemed to be adulterated under this provision if the standard of strength, quality or purity be plainly stated upon the bottle, box or other container thereof although the standard may differ from that determined by the test laid down in the United States Pharmacopoeia or National Formulary. (2) If its strength or purity fall below the professed standard or quality under which it is sold. In the case of confectionery: If it contains terra alba, barytes, talc, chrome yellow or other mineral substance or poisonous colour or flavour, or other ingredient deleterious or detrimental to health, or any vinous, malt or spirituous liquor or compound or narcotic drug. In the case of food: (1) If any substance has been mixed and packed with it so as to reduce or lower or injuriously affect its quality or strength. (2) If any substance has been substituted wholly or in part for the article. (3) If any valuable constituent of the article has been wholly or in part abstracted. (4) If it be mixed, coloured, powdered, coated or stained in a manner whereby damage or inferiority is concealed. (5) If it contain any added poisonous or other added deleterious ingredient which may render such article injurious to health: provided that when in the preparation of food products for shipment they are preserved by any external application applied in such manner that the preservation is necessarily removed mechanically, or by maceration in water, or otherwise, and directions for removal of said preservations shall be printed on the covering of the package, the provisions of the act shall be construed as applying only when said products are ready for consumption. (6) If it consists in whole or in part of a filthy, decomposed or putrid animal or vegetable substance, or any portion of an animal unfit for food, whether manufactured or not, or if it is the product of a diseased animal or one that has died otherwise than by slaughter. . . .”
Whatever vagueness attaches to these definitions is intended to be removed by secs. 3 and 4, which provide that the secretaries of the Treasury, of Agriculture, and of Commerce and Labour “shall make uniform rules and regulations for carrying out the provisions of the act, including the collection and examination of specimens of food and drugs,” which examination “shall be made in the bureau of chemistry of the department of agriculture, or under the direction and supervision of such bureau, for the purpose of determining from such examinations whether such articles are adulterated or misbranded within the meaning of the act.” Contravention of the act is punishable for the first offence by a fine not exceeding 500 dollars or 1 year’s imprisonment or both, and for each subsequent offence by a fine not less than 1000 dollars or 1 year’s imprisonment or both. Under an act of congress, approved March 1903, the bureau of agriculture established standards of purity for food products, “to determine what are regarded as adulterations therein for the guidance of the officials of the various states and of the courts of justice.” The elaborate set of food definitions and standards worked out under the guidance of the chief of the bureau, Dr H. W. Wiley, have also received legal sanction and form a corollary to the National Food Law. For each of the more important articles of food an official definition of its nature and composition has thus been established, of the utmost value to food officers, manufacturers and merchants not only in the United States but throughout the world. A few of these definitions may here find a place:—
“Lard is the rendered fresh fat from slaughtered healthy hogs. Leaf-lard is the lard rendered at moderately high temperatures from the internal fat of the abdomen of the hog, excluding that adherent to the intestines. Standard lard and standard leaflard are lard and leaf-lard respectively, free from rancidity, containing not more than 1% of substances other than fatty acids, not fat, necessarily incorporated therewith in the process of rendering, and standard leaf-lard has an iodine number not
