The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1902-12-28
PLEA FOR PURE FOOD
Secretary Bruner Maintains
That Congress Should Act
During The Summer Months Meats In The Raj
eigh Market are Treated With ':PG-
serving Powders"
EDITOR Paul Pierce says:

greSS failed TO pass pure IoOu law dt
the last session. We must have a COM
prehension, practical and effective law to
prevent the sale or manufacture of i'm
pure or aduIterated food products, and
| food inspection should be removed en-
| tirely from politics. There are imita-
lions, frauds and authorizations every
where. Food articles are mixed up with
substances that affect purity and lower
| their quality and strength; inferior sub
stances are substituted for the genuine
article; valuable ingredients are extract
ed from the real products true articles
are initiated and sold under another
name, and ingredients are added which
| are poisonous or injurious to health.
| 1.-THE press is today preaching the gos-
pei of pure food and federal surveillance
of food products. 1t requires only a pass
| ing familiarity with the situation to real
lie the inadequacy of State laws to pro-
tect the people, for they not only lack
| harmony and coordination, but seldom
are enforced. Some of the men who are
appointed as food inspectors could not
detect an adulteration if they were per-
|
powerful microscope, and even if they did
detect it, the possible political effect of
the discovery would overshadow all con-
| sideration of public health.
"The extent to which human rascality
will go was revealed in the investigation
of the milk supply in New York City
conducted by the Rockefeller Institute.
The psychologists found that the milk
was not only adulterated and polluted,
but actually traced 900 outbreaks of cpl
demic diseases to impure milk.
Some months ago an analysis of the
milk furnished the patients of a Chicago
hospital showed formalin in sufficient
quantities to cause or at least hasten the
death of sick per sons 1t seems that the
nurses and patients had complained of
the milk. and had declared upon occa-
sions that it tasted funny Formalin
is chemical used in hospitals for funi-
eating purposes because of it's deadly
character. Because it will keep milk
from turning sour, however, milk deal
ers have been known to use it extensive
ly, especially in milk supplied to public
institutions.
"A prominent grocer informs me that
it is Impossible to sell genuine maple
syrup in many parts of the country, for
the reason that it is so different from
that which the public has been educated
to believe to be the pure article. More
Vermont maple sugar is manufactured in
Iowa in a season than the maple trees Of
Vermont could produce in years. But
that is not all. There seems to be no
end to the list of adulterated foods
American tables are now supplied with
butter sweetened or kept sweet by bora
cic acid and chemically. colored; JAM
jelly and preserves not even distantly ac-
quainted with the fruit are made wholly
of gelatin, glucose, with chemical color
ing and flavor; tea is made by mixing
Divide of iron with tea dust and rolled
by means OF starch into pellets resembling
the genuine tea chemical vinegar, catsur
and table sauces containing no vegetable
matter whatever; pickles made green by
preparation of copper; wines sweeten-
ed by glucose; beers rank with salicy-
lie acid WHISTLES diluted with proof
spirits and artificially beaded with sui
phuric acid and smoothed with olive oil
Filthy butter, absolutely unfit for use
is collected in this city and shipped to
the woods. where it is remanufactured
and sent back to Chicago and sold as pure
, butter. Fermented and rotten tomatoes
are manufactured into catsup and sold
by leading houses as pure
"In his annual reports Secretary Will
son, of the Department of Agriculture
has strongly urged Congress to pass a
comprehensive pure food law. The chem
|
ed in cooperation with the pure food
congress and other organizations, and
their analyses show that hundreds of ar
ticles of daily use are adulterated, many
of them IN such a manner as to make
them highly injurious. The pure food COM
missions of several States are doing
splendid work in educating the people
up to the fact that adulteration Injuries
legitimate industries and fosters decep-
ton and fraud But this work is in its
infancy, and the people must awaken to
the great Importance of the question and
demand larger appropriations and more
efficient laws and publicity to success
fully prosecute work of such vast con-
| sequences.
"The coffee congress, which has beer
in session in New York city, has tried tC
discover some way to stop the adultera-
tion of that article, but it has no power
1t can only recommend.
Impure and adulterated foods leave
a trail of human woe. We do MOI
realize the amount of disease that is due
to poisonous and indigestible substances
that are mixed in with the things we eat
Along this trail are sufferers from dys-
pepsia, rheumatism, appendicitis, al
sorts of liver and kidney diseases. i'm
pure blood, impure compilations and al
forms of stomach and bowel complaints
1t is easy for the trained eye of a doc
tor to pick out the sufferers 1t is also
easy for him to pick out starved anc
poisoned well fed bodies Men who
work with their minds often eat i'm.