Science and the Criminal

by C. Ainsworth Mitchell

Hence it follows that if the use of preservatives in lime juice cordial and the like is to be prohibited, the law ought to be rigidly enforced and not applied in the present haphazard fashion, which allows one manufacturer to sell his goods unchallenged for years, and drags his competitor into one police court after another.

It is hardly fair that matters which are so much questions of opinion should be left to be fought out in the police courts before magistrates who have no technical knowledge to deal with them.

The position, however, was well put by a magistrate a year or two ago in giving his decision in a prosecution for the sale of lime juice cordial preserved with salicylic acid. Evidence was given by chemists and medical men for the prosecution that such an addition was injurious, while a number of scientific witnesses of equal eminence were present to support the view of the defendants.

The magistrate, without calling upon the defence, dismissed the case. He held that there was an irreconcilable conflict of opinion between the purists who would allow no preservatives whatever in such products and the manufacturer who had to meet the popular demand for such an article that would keep after it had been opened, and he considered that it had not been proved that the amount of salicylic acid was in excess of that needed for that purpose. Incidentally he remarked that if notification of the addition of such preservatives on the label were made compulsory, “then the fun would begin.” You would see notices of So-and-so’s lime juice preserved with sulphide, “harmless, but with a smell of bad eggs.” Or of So-and-so’s lemon squash, “preserved with salicylic acid, refreshing, but ruinous to the digestion.”

One of the recommendations of the Departmental Committee of 1899 was that means should be provided for the establishment of a separate Court of Reference, which should deal with the question of preservatives in food and decide which should be permissible and in what quantities they should be allowed.

Such a Court of Reference, in which there should be representatives not only of the medical and chemical professions, but also of the large manufacturers and dealers in food, would tend to remove the present state of uncertainty on this point.

Looking at the matter from a practical point of view, it seems to be an impossibility to eliminate the use of preservatives from all articles of food, and it would be a far more satisfactory course if a via media could be found between prohibiting their use absolutely and leaving it to the manufacturer to dose his products with any quantity of any antiseptic. Evidence could be heard by such a body of official referees, who, after taking into consideration the views of all concerned, could from time to time issue authoritative regulations, which would be binding upon everyone.

It should also be part of the duties of such a Court to see that the regulations were rigidly enforced, so that a manufacturer who carried them out should not suffer by the competition of another manufacturer who (as at the present time) ran only a trifling risk of prosecution in ignoring them.

Another advantage of such a proposed Court of Reference would be that the manufacturer would no longer be liable to a criminal prosecution on points on which there is no agreement between the highest scientific authorities in the country.

Under the present conditions, a town or borough council, using the ratepayers’ money, may attempt to get a decision on the subject of preservatives in an ordinary police court. The manufacturer, if he is rich enough to pay for the necessary expert evidence, will probably succeed in getting the case dismissed, as, in fact, has frequently been done.