The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1913-09-10
RURAL COMMUNITIES
 UNPROTECTED
Government Planning to Extend Food
 Protection To Them

Colorado Springs, Colo, Sept 1O- City dwellers alone are protected by the federal pure food law, according
 to Dr. Carl L. AIsberg, chief chemist of the Department of Agriculture who told delegates to the annual conven- tfenS of the American Public Health Association yesterday that the health interests of rural communities were being sacrificed to the great centers
 through the 1naction of State health
 authorities. He reminded them that
 federal control was limited to inter to undertake inspection of food with in the borders of any state.
 The probability, therefore, said sDr. Alsberg, lis that there are up
 wards of To,oo0,oo0 of our 91,00O, 900
 people who have no efficient and sys-
 tematic protection from the major
 causes of the spread of typhoid; tuber-
 culosis, deadly intestinal diseases of infants, scarlet fever, septic sore
 throat trtnchinosis and other ail-
 nents resulting from the circulation
 of disease producing organisms The solution of the problem, the | speaker urged, was to be found in
 more rigid and energetic enforcement of state health laws
 "A factory may be run under the
 most unsanttary conditions." he con tinued, milking may be done by | | milk may be produced on a farm | where 3. member of the family is suf- fering from typhoid, and the federal | authorities have, no power to act.
 Even if these products are shipped
 across a state line and samples are l taken, there is no method for analyz-
 ing a product which can supply evi- dence that the food is produced in
 unsanitary ways within contami- hating reach of epidemic or endemic diseases. State authorities, however, cah enter these factories, need not wait for shipments to cross State lines and, therefore, provided only that their laws are effective and the funds
 at their disposal adequate, can pre- vent the sale of these deadly un1abel- 1 ed foods''
 The products Dr. A1sberg consider
 which should be most carefully
 watched, do not enter largely into in l terstate trade. They include milk
 and other dairy products, water, fish
 and shelI-fsh, candy and, in fact "all 1 food that is eaten raw or is shiDned | exposed to the air.
 With the declaration that the Pure 1 Food Law was Ian economic meas
 ure,' in that it compelled principal l ly accurate branding of goods enter 1 ing into interstate commerce Dr. As | berg said the Department of Agricul- 1 ture was considering extension of | its powers in order to protect further | the rural communities.
 | The Department feels it should
 give more attention to the protection
 of these communides,' he said. This
 means that the work hitherto largely
 confined to detection of the presence of preservatives in labeled foods which
 do not carry organic diseases, and the prosecutions for nnisbranding which
 might work a monetary fraud on the l consumer, should be widely and rap 1 idly extended to the control of inter
 state commerce in the dangerous un- | labeled foods which can transmit and
 which do transmit serious diseases
 Plans for extending this work to inter
 state shipments of milk all over the
 country have already been made It
 Is the plan of the Department to do
 more than exercise merely police con-
 tro1 over interstate shipments