Pullman herald. [volume] (Pullman, W.T. [Wash.]) 1888-1989, 1913-09-26
RURAL SANITATION

delivered an address before the gen
eral session of the 41st annual meet
ing of the American Public Health
association, at Colorado Springs,
Colo. DR.. Alsberg's subject related
to the limitations of the federal food
law.
The following is an abstract of his
remarks:
Forty-eight states must rigidly in
spect and control all easily contain
mated foods and drugs produced
within their borders. These include
such foods as milk and and other
dairy products, water, fish, shell
fish, many meat products, candy,
and, indeed all food that is eaten
raw or shipped exposed to the air
Each state owes this protection both
to It's own citizens and to those of
other states who buy it's products.
The individual state must guard
the health of the state. The federal
the states. The federal authority,
under the food and drugs act, ex-
tends only to food products entering
into interstate commerce, and trans
mission of disease through infected
food and water Is not wholly an in
terstate matter. Disease frequently
is of local source and local spread.
The food and drugs act is not an eff
fective weapon against the spread
within the state borders of disease
producing organisms in food The
federal authorities can not inter
fere with domestic commerce, but
the state health officers are under
no such limitations. Moreover, the
federal authorities have no right of
entry and inspection into food fac
tories within the state lines A fac
tory can be run under the most un-
sanitary conditions; milking may be
done by man recovering from scar
let fever, or milk may be produced
on a farm where a memb Der of the
family is suffering from typhoid, and
the federal authorities have no
power to act. Even if these products
are shipped across the state line and
samples are taken, there is no
method for analysing a product
which can supply evidence that the
food is produced in unsanitary ways
OF within communicating reach of
epidemic diseases. The state author
tiles, however, can enter these fac
tories, need not wait for shipment
across state lines, and therefore, pro-
vided only that their laws are eff
cient and the funds at their disposal
adequate, can prevent the sale of
these deadly unlabeled foods.
The food and drugs act, as admin
istered in the past has been very
largely an economic measure. 1t
has, to be sure, prevented very large
~ the mixing of active poisons in
hurtful quantities with food pro-
ducts, but it's particular work has
been to see that food products are
properly branded, so that the con-
sumner knows what he is getting and
is not cheated into paying a high
price for a product adulterated with
a cheapener. This must of course
always be one of the purposes of the
act; but we must not be deceived
into believing that this very import
ant economic function of the act is
of great hygienic significance. Mis-
branding does not demonstrably af-
feet the death rate of the country. If
the efforts devoted to prevention of
misbranding were to be concentrated
more largely upon the suppression of
the traffic in contaminated milk,
meat, vegetables and other products
that may carry disease, positive re-
duction of the countrys death rate
would inevitably result. At best,
however, the federal authorities,
under the foods and drugs act, can
deal only with such of these bac-
teria-carrying products as chance to
enter interstate commerce.
The federal control of interstate
commerce has in the past, and will
have to be in the future, of more
benefit to the large cities than to the
small towns and rural communities,
because the large cities, even though
in the, center of the state, draw their
supplies to a far greater degree
through interstate commerce than do
the small towns and rural communi-
ties. The help that the federal in
spectors can extend to the rural COM
munities, therefore, is absolutely
limited to those settlements which
happen to be near the borders of the
state and so receive some of their
easily contaminated foods through
Interstate commerce. The rural cOfn-