“If you must adulterate your milk, please use this clean water.” (Notice on a water tank in an Indian dairy, in the 1930's.)
Did you know that the first ever attempt, in the English speaking world anyway, to legislate against food adulteration originated in Britain in 1860? That year “An Act for Preventing the Adulteration of Articles of Food or Drink” was passed by Parliament, although by the time it reached the Statute Book it had itself suffered such adulteration that it was virtually inoperative. However, it paved the way for the other laws that followed fairly rapidly, and an interesting point about its original draft was that there was provision for regulation-making powers almost as wide in some respects as those which exist today. That should be a sobering thought for the enthusiastic reformist.
Like so many comparatively modern problems, food adulteration became a real headache only with the advent of capitalism. It was the Industrial Revolution which pushed the peasants into the towns, no longer producing their own foodstuffs but having to rely on those produced and sold by others. There was a growing demand for cheap food in line with the wage worker's puny purchasing power, and it was little wonder that adulteration began to flourish. Indeed, it became a very profitable business and by the beginning of the 19th century some of the more far-seeing capitalists were getting rather alarmed at its possible effects on the labour force.
It was not just that ale and milk were being watered down, but also that highly poisonous substances such as lead, mercury, tincture of capsicum and essence of cayenne, were being added to food. These and other abuses were publicised by The Lancet Analytical Sanitary Commission, and were investigated by a Parliamentary committee in 1855. Their confirming report is interesting for its assessment of the problem in commercial terms, something with which we are so familiar in 1966: —
Not only is the public health thus being exposed to danger and pecuniary fraud being committed on the whole community, but public morality is tainted and the high commercial character of the country . . . lowered both at home and in the eyes of foreign countries. (Quoted by Dr. J. H. Hamence, in a paper to the Pure Food Centenary Conference, 1960.)
Since those days we have come a long way. or have we? It is true, as Dr. Hamence also tells us, that by the turn of the century “the grosser forms of adulteration had largely disappeared and the lesser forms were being kept well under control” due mainly to the efforts of the public analysts. Equally true is it that today most food manufacture's have their own scientific staff and analytical chemists to help them keep within the mass of Government regulations. Yet the duties of the public analyst, although much changed when compared with his early predecessors, have expanded a great deal over the years. They now involve use of such methods of detection as chromatography and spectro-photometry. Why is this?
Well, capitalism doesn’t stand still, of course. As we have said, it was responsible for the emergence of the adulteration problem, and it also causes it to continue, but in different guises and forms. (This, by the way, is not to mention the very real new danger of contamination from radio active fallout.)
The analyst of the 1960’s has to be on his guard against a multitude of additives, colourings, anti-oxidants and pesticide residues (there were about 750 different pesticides on the market last year), to say nothing of the need to check manufacturers' claims on the nutritional value of their products. In this connection, the 1960 words of Dr. Hamence could easily have been written today:—
. . . advertising is straining at the leash and heaven knows what we should be told about a foodstuff if there were no public analyst.
All this is not surprising in the context of mid-20th century capitalism. For while the question of purity is one which may constantly concern a food manufacturer this is only part of the story. In the chaos that is capitalism, all sorts of interests compete, sometimes with the result that for each step taken forward, just a bit more than that one step is taken backward, Agriculture, for instance, has become “agribusiness” with the accent on intensive methods—hence the arrival of the broiler chicken, that “rather dull food for masses of humans, most of whom live mechanised and rather dull lives” (Elspeth Huxley—Brave New Victuals), And with it goes the problem of diseases—serious ones like leukaemia —to which the broiler seems particularly prone, and which some doctors fear may be passed on to consumers.
Again, with an eye on the market and a quick turnover, cockerels are caponised and bullocks fattened by giving them synthetic oestrogens (female hormones), which are apt to hang around in the carcasses and are resistant even to cooking. Miss Huxley points out:—
Oestrogens are potent substances, liable if carelessly handled to induce in human males squeaky voices, beardless chins and swelling breasts. In female domestic animals they can cause cystic ovaries, prolapse of the rectum and nymphomania, so they might not be good for the girls.
The amounts in meat are residual only, but the experts cannot say for sure whether they might accumulate over a period and damage health (prolonged administration of oestrogens to rabbits and mice has caused them to have cancer). So in the meantime, the practice will continue, together with the profits.
The Sunday Times colour magazine for October 17th, 1965, contained an interesting survey on current food production and tastes. It drew attention to the uniform "blandness” of taste at which the manufacturers aim .and blamed this trend at least in part on to that evil euphemism of the sixties, ‘market research”. This, thought Priscilla Chapman, was what had persuaded food firms to produce, and consumers to ask for. the dull flavourless substances that our poorer grandparents would have rejected out of hand. But to blame market research is to beg the question. Why market research? Why markets? And there is another side to it. intimately bound up with the production of things for the market goes the modern rush and tear which have pushed working class tastes further down the scale. A prime Scots sirloin is expensive and takes a long time to cook, unlike the pre tenderised steak, cut from low-grade mass-produced barley beef, and packed ready for (he oven. And as time is becoming daily a more important consideration, barley beef steak is ousting the sirloin.
But the Sunday Times survey was at least useful in reminding us of the truly enormous amounts of synthetic colours, flavourisers, stabilisers, emulsifiers and preservatives we consume with our foods, many of them doubtful from a health point of view, on the experts own evidence. We are reminded, too, of the pesticide danger to which Rachel Carson so vividly drew attention in Silent Spring. Following her book, the late President Kennedy appointed a committee to investigate the question in detail. Said the committee, the average American has about 12 parts per million of D.D.T. in his tissues, the figure among farm workers being 17 p.p.m., and 648 p.p.m. among workers at pesticide factories. The committee admitted the possibility of toxicity. They could hardly do otherwise in face of the wholesale destruction of wildlife and fish in the Mississippi Basin from the effects of the same chemical.
No one seems to know just how harmful the effects of ibis and other pesticides are, although according to Anthony Tucker (Guardian 1.2.66) they are real enough, “in spite of an upsurge of defensive comment from the pesticide industry itself." Uneasiness continues to grow over the whole question, meantime: in America, Germany and other European countries, some of the substances have been banned, but are still permitted in Britain—and vice versa. But the basis of the problem, remains the same everywhere—production for profit. As Elspeth Huxley again puts it:—
The chemical industry is highly competitive, and pressure very strong to move anything new on to the market before the rival backroom boys across the way get on to it. This pressure has forced new products into use before they should have been. (Brave New Victuals. PP. 115-116)
So this is the background against which the public analyst and his equivalent abroad have to work, it is little wonder that he finds it hard going. And contrary to popular belief, the mass production of today is not geared to meet the needs of an increasing population, but to meet the needs of a market. How else can we explain the crisis of over-production which hit the broiler industry, for example, soon after it started in this country, so that many suppliers were driven out of business? Today, less than 1,000 growers produce 90 per cent of all broilers marketed, and the number of chick breeders has fallen in 10 years from 3,000 to 12.
It cannot be denied, of course, that there is a problem of pest control in food production. Nevertheless, many of the chemicals turned out are quite unnecessary and overlap the effects of others. The much safer method of breeding animal and plant strains resistant to the pests concerned, is promising, but developments are necessarily slow and do not hold out the hope of quick profitability. But when all is said and done, it is only in a crazy set-up of private property that such a situation is tolerated. In a sane world, it would be unthinkable that any substance should be used which involved even the smallest element of risk to human health and welfare. And the production of any chemical would depend solely on whether, after the most exhaustive testing. it could be said to be of real benefit to human beings What other motive could there possibly be?
Eddie Critchfield
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