standard for comparison. For this purpose the standards of the Association of Official Agricultural Chemists, already referred to, have generally been upheld by the courts.

The clause which declares a food adulterated if it contains any added poisonous or other added deleterious ingredient which may render such article injurious to health has given rise to more discussion than any other part of the law. It had become a custom of the trade to use in the preparation of food a number of substances which had been found helpful in securing the desired color or keeping qualities of the foods, but whose wholesomeness had sometimes been questioned.

Congress declined to include in the food law any specific authorization or prohibition of any particular substance so used, leaving this to be covered by the rules and regulations which the three Secretaries were directed to prepare, and appropriating money to the Department of Agriculture for investigations as to the wholesomeness of these substances.

The original Rules and Regulations contained the provision that: "The Secretary of Agriculture shall determine from time to time, in accordance with the authority conferred by the agricultural appropriation act, Public 382, approved June 30, 1906, the principles which shall guide the use of colors, preservatives, and other substances added to foods; and when concurred in by the Secretary of the Treasury and the Secretary of Commerce, the principles so established shall become a part of these regulations."

Regarding the wholesomeness of colors, it is the practice to permit the use of any natural vegetable or animal color which is not known to be impure or injurious, but to be much more stringent with respect to the use of artificial (synthetic) colors. Only about a dozen artificial colors have so far been authorized, and of these the purity of each batch must be attested before it can legally be used.

Whether the presence of an authorized color must be declared

upon the label will depend upon the nature of the food. Any coloring which is intended to mislead is illegal and in most other cases the fact that the food has been artificially colored must be plainly stated.

Under these regulations many manufacturers who formerly used artificial coloring have ceased to do so. Thus one of the good effects of the law is that it results in foods being marketed in more nearly their normal appearance.

The establishment of principles to guide the use of preservatives has presented greater difficulty than in the case of colors, partly for the obvious reason that the preservation of food is necessary while the coloring of food is not. It is true that by drying, by heating and canning, and to a certain extent by refrigeration, foods may be preserved from the season of abundance to the season of scarcity without the addition of any preservative substance, but restriction to these methods of preservation would often be unnecessarily burdensome and costly and would in many cases involve a loss of the flavor for which the food is chiefly prized. The prohibition of all preservative substances would be as unsatisfactory to the consumer as to the producer and has never been seriously contemplated. What has sometimes been attempted is to divide all preservative substances into two classes, those in one class to be freely permitted and those in the other class to be strictly forbidden. The fact that the law defines food in such a way as to include condiments has been construed as tacitly authorizing the unlimited use of such preservatives as have condimental properties (like salt, sugar, vinegar, and woodsmoke) and the question of wholesomeness has as yet been officially raised only with respect to the noncondimental preservatives such as saltpeter, sodium benzoate, salicylic acid, and sulphur dioxide.

To assist the Secretary of Agriculture in determining the wholesomeness of certain of the preservative substances used, a Referee Board of Consulting Scientific Experts consisting of

five prominent scientists, not otherwise connected with the Government service, was appointed and served for a number of years. In general such Rules and Regulations governing the use of preservatives as have been formulated by the three Secretaries have been based on the findings of the Bureau of Chemistry or of the Referee Board or have been made tentatively pending investigation. The regulations at present (1924) in force are given in the Appendix. As might be anticipated, when the different (noncondimental) preservative substances are treated each on its own merits, the regulations deemed necessary are not the same in all cases. Regarding the four substances just mentioned the present Federal regulations are essentially as follows: Saltpeter may be used without restriction; sodium benzoate may be used with no restriction except that the presence and true amount must be stated on the label; salicylic acid is forbidden; sulphur dioxide may be used only in those foods in which its use was already common and only in limited amounts.

Guaranty. In order to secure justice in the fixing of responsibility, the law provides that the manufacturer or wholesaler may assume liability for his products so that he and not the retail dealer shall be held responsible in case of adulteration or misbranding. Formerly this was done by filing with the Government a general guaranty which was recorded under Serial Number. Each package then bore a label showing the serial number and name and address of the party responsible for the guaranty. This guaranty was simply to fix responsibility and to protect the retail dealer. It afforded no additional protection to the consumer and added nothing to the penalty in case the food was found to be adulterated or misbranded. This, however, was not always understood, many purchasers supposing that they derived some additional protection from such guaranty. Hence a revised regulation, effective May 1, 1916, abolished the issuing of serial numbers and forbade their use or the printing of the "guaranty legend" on the labels.

Under the present regulation the guaranty should be incorporated in or attached to the bill of sale, invoice, or bill of lading, and should not appear on the labels or packages.

Imported foods. The law provides for the inspection of imported foods while still in the hands of the customs officers or under bond. This greatly facilitates the prevention of importation of adulterated food, and it is believed that comparatively little adulterated food is now imported. Adulterated food bearing labels indicating a foreign origin may be found in the American market but is likely to have been prepared in this country.

State and Municipal Food Control

Since the Federal authorities cannot inspect or control any food which is produced and consumed in the same state, it is evident that each of the forty-eight states must have adequate legislation and inspection if its citizens are to obtain the full benefit of the pure food movement. In order fully to realize the importance of state and municipal control, one must remember that some of the foods most readily subjected to fraudulent adulteration (e.g., milk) and some of those most subject to dangerous contamination (e.g., meats and shellfish) are largely handled by producers and dealers who do a local business and so do not come under the authority of the Federal Government. Slaughtering and meat packing is now a highly centralized industry and is regulated both by the Food and Drugs Act and by a special Meat Inspection Law (see Chapter VI and Appendix B), yet about half the meat consumed in the United States is slaughtered in local establishments which are never visited by the Federal inspectors because they do no interstate business.

The rural population and the residents of small towns, who together make up about one half the people of the United States, derive relatively little direct benefit from the Federal law. Indirectly they benefit in proportion as the Federal legislation and

inspection serves to stimulate and standardize that of the states. At the present time most of the states have on their statute books food laws which are modeled more or less directly after the Federal law and which are satisfactory in so far as sufficient funds are appropriated to make possible their enforce

ment.

State laws may be more stringent in some respects than those of the Federal Government. Thus several states limit the time that food may be held in cold storage; the Sanitary Code of New York State makes it unlawful for any person "affected with any communicable disease to handle food or food products in any manner whatever," and several other states have laws or regulations of similar import.

The responsibility of the enforcement of state food laws is lodged sometimes with health officers, sometimes with the commissioner of agriculture, sometimes with a food commissioner independent of either the Department of Agriculture or of Health. Not infrequently the office of "dairy and food commissioner " has developed through the fact that legal regulation of the milk supply and dairy industry antedated general food legislation. Whatever the organization, it is important that the enforcement of the state food laws be in the hands of permanent officials, scientifically trained, gifted with good judgment and administrative capacity, and entirely independent of politics.

State legislation and inspection may be supplemented by municipal ordinances enforced by distinct corps of officers. In New York City, for example, the board of health has the power to enact a sanitary code which becomes law on publication without requiring the approval of any other body or official. This code contains general rules for food control; and additional rules and regulations to govern certain industries are also promulgated by the board and thus become part of, and have the legal force of, the code. The board of health has the power to control any food industry by requiring that it be carried on