Court Opinion

ID: 9637728
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 15:17:27.510419+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:09:59.775438
License: Public Domain

SIBLEY, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
Zeal for enforcement, I think, is here outrunning common sense and the true in*253tent of the law. The seizure was made in 19-13, in the midst of the late war. Theretofore the dressing for popped corn had been some animal or vegetable oil, such as melted butter, cocoanut oil, soybean oil, cottonseed oil, or Wesson oil. Because of war conditions, cocoanut oil could not be had at all, butter and cottonseed oil, soybean and Wesson oil, which had food value, became scarce and practically unobtainable because of the war demand for foodstuffs. Something else had to be substituted in the popcorn business, carried on at movie theaters and similar places of amusement, where popcorn is eaten in idleness and not for nutriment. Mineral oil, which had long been used in salad dressings in place of olive oil and the like, and is still so used, came into general use for the popcorn dressing. It was colored light yellow, (which is the natural color of most oils and greases unless refined out), and was flavored to give the popcorn some taste. No point whatever is here made against adding the flavor. There is only the charge that a color was added which made it look more like melted butter. There is no evidence as to the col- or of cocoanut oil, cottonseed oil, soybean or Wesson oil which also it was substituting. There is no evidence that the intent was to make it look like butter, or that any eater of popcorn thought it was butter, or cared. There was no effort at deceit while in interstate commerce, with which alone the federal Act is concerned. The seized drums were frankly labelled: “Pop N Oil, made from Liquid Petrolatum, Plastic Butter Flavor, Artificial Flavoring. Color Added. Distributed by Wilkin Theater Supply, Inc.” The charge of misbranding is expressly abandoned, as it must be. Only adulteration is claimed. As to that it was on the trial expressly stated by government counsel: “If your honor please, we don’t make any charge in this proceeding that the product is injurious to health or deleterious.” It is true the court pressed questions as to that upon a witness as quoted in Note 1 of the opinion, but on the entire evidence he found that “the mineral oil was neutral and not harmful.” The evidence is specific that in a nickel package of popcorn, which weighs one ounce, there would be only one-sixteenth of an ounce of dressing, say a half-teaspoonful. That is, by common experience with mineral oil, negligible. The law intends to keep deceitful or injurious mixtures out of interstate commerce, but it does not aim to exclude all mixtures. Where petrolatum is sold as such, frankly stated to be artificially colored and flavored, and is perfectly harmless for the use intended, which is really more for entertainment than for feeding, it seems hypercritical to me at a time when war had forced all manner of substitutions in food, to condemn these drums of fifty gallons each as forfeited by law because of adulteration.