British Food Journal Volume 47 Issue 8 1945

The services rendered by the Public Analysts of the country during the past seventy years in general and during the past five years in particular in the interests of public health is one of those imponderable national assets whose value to the community cannot be estimated in terms of the pound sterling or the pound avoirdupois. But there they are and the best acknowledgement is to say that a knowledge of what should be "the nature, substance, and quality" of our foods and drugs is largely based on the impartial and practical findings of the group of experts known generically as "Public Analyst." All such reports, like this one for the year 1944, which is under consideration, strongly emphasise by their mere nature the increasing complexity and importance of the examination of foods and drugs under the main a,nd subsidiary acts and regulations. In fact the Public Analyst might, under present conditions, say, mutatis mutandis, with Bacon "so great is the accumulation of the statutes ... and so intricate are they, that the certainty of the law is entirely lost in the heap." We believe that when Bacon wrote there were about two thousand statutes on the books. By this time the number of regulations issued by the Ministry of Food in the interests of public health must have swelled almost to the dimensions of a legal code, but there the comparison ends. Many regulations have been issued as a result of conditions imposed by the War whereby the use of a corresponding number of what were well-known constituents of foods has been either prohibited or limited in amount. The processing of foods has greatly developed. Many of these foods are produced under the stimulus of trade competition. The Labelling of Food (No. 2) Order, 1944, "by far the most important of the orders relating to the adulteration of food," requires that the labels of pre-packed foods must give the name or registered trade mark and address of the packer or labeller; and that the purchaser may have some idea of what he may be buying the quantity of each ingredient must be stated, or if this be not done then the ingredients must be listed in the order of their proportions beginning with the name of the one that occurs in the largest proprotion. The net weight of the food must be stated. Certain exemptions are allowed. Thus milk, fish, fruit, and vegetables preserved otherwise than by canning and bottling and for others whose composition is already controlled by regulation. The Order ensures that "the