British Food Journal Volume 8 Issue 8 1906

Abstract

It is an ill wind that blows nobody good, and the British public may be congratulated on the salutary, if rude, awakening which the gale raised in Chicago has given them. Peacefully slumbering, and content for years to accept as gospel truths the asseverations of all sorts and conditions of food‐fakers, both of home and foreign growth, the “Britisher” has suddenly received a shock from which it will take him a long time to recover. The abominable crime of milk‐adulteration—striking as it does at helpless infancy and at the vitality of the infirm and the weak; the “doctoring” of food products with a variety of pernicious drugs on the pleas of “preservation” and of meeting “public wants,” but in reality done for the sake of sordid gain; the gigantic meat and butter frauds, whereby largely the agricultural interest of this country has been brought to its present pass; the faking of beer and the wholesale arsenical poisoning which was one of its direct consequences; the denaturing of other foods by abstraction, substitution, and sophistication—all these things have been regarded by the “man in the street” with a sort of languid interest; have, at most, called forth passing comment from the lay press, and cheap sneers about faddery and faddists from various ignorant scribblers; while a succession of lethargic and feeble administrations have shelved the reports of their own Committees and Commissions, and, except under rare and abnormal pressure, have been content to adopt a policy of laissez faire.

Citation

(1906), "British Food Journal Volume 8 Issue 8 1906", British Food Journal, Vol. 8 No. 8, pp. 141-160. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb010938