Cocoa shall contain at least 20 per cent. of cocoa fat.
Vinegar shall contain not less than 3 per cent. of acetic acid.
The practice of fraudulent adulteration has been indulged in for centuries. In every civilised state there have been enactments against it. The Romans had their inspectors of meat and corn. In England an Act to prohibit adulteration was passed as early as 1267, and penalties against it were in force in 1581, 1604, 1836, 1851. In 1822, Accum published a work having the sensational title of ‘Death in the Pot,’ and in 1855 appeared Dr Hassall’s book, ‘Food and its Adulterations.’ The information conveyed in these works, added to the revelations of the ‘Lancet’ Sanitary Commission, and the contributions to scientific literature on the subject of food by Letheby, Pavy, Parkes, Blyth, and others, together with the published evidence given before the House of Commons Commission appointed to carry out an inquiry into the subject, roused public attention to such a degree as to lead to the passing by the legislature of the Adulteration Acts.
The sophistications may be divided into several distinct classes:
1. To give weight or volume, such as water added to butter, plaster of paris to flour, &c.; red earths to annatto, sand to tea-leaves, &c.; water to milk, &c.; all these, therefore, are substitutions of worthless or very cheap articles which take the place of the real.
2. To give a colour which either makes the article more pleasing to the eye, or else disguises an inferior one, e.g., Prussian blue, black lead, &c., to green teas; annatto to cheese, &c.; arsenite of copper to sweetmeats, &c.
3. Substitutions of a cheaper form of the article, or the same substance from which the strength has been extracted put in the place of the real, e.g., tea mixed with spent leaves, &c.
4. A very small class where the adulteration is really added with no fraudulent intent, but to enhance the quality of the goods sold—alum to bread in small quantities.
The following, according to Blyth (‘Dic. of Hygiène’), is a list of articles most commonly adulterated, with the names of the substances used in their sophistication:—
Aconitia with other alkaloids, e.g., delphinia, aconella, &c.