I remember once, a number of years ago, at a table in London, discussing with some merchants from South America the subject of buying their goods in the United States instead of England.
One man from British Guiana said: “It is impossible to deal with the United States; they have no food-test laws, and we buy one thing and get another. Then take machinery and implements. The first three or four purchases will be all right, after which they put off on us shelf-worn goods which they could not sell at home.”
When the government can put an official stamp on each article exported it will be good for the permanence of our export trade.
No such general law now exists, and the best our government can do is to certify that the goods comply with the standard of the country to which they are to be sent. It is believed that many of the preservatives used with food products are harmless to the human body, and a scientific test of this is now being conducted (December, 1902). The Agricultural Department has called upon the young scientists of the colleges and universities to assist in settling this question. A picked body of students have been supplied with the purest food to bring them to perfect condition, and soups, meats, vegetables, jellies, etc., containing preservatives claimed to be harmless will be given them, and as soon as a touch of dyspepsia is manifest the test will be dropped. It was doubtful whether football and baseball managers, not to mention such insignificant factors as professors and mothers, would consent that their favorites should be submitted to such experiments. But scientists are earnest seekers for truth, and enough subjects were readily found to make the trial.
It is not so much the making of impure foods that is objected to as it is an effort to provide that goods shall be labeled for what they are—that is, a can labeled raspberry jam shall not consist of gelatine with a few raspberry seeds and juice used for coloring, but shall be the real thing.
In recent testimony before Congress a case of this kind was brought out. A certain firm made jelly from the refuse of apples—that is, rotten and wilted apples, peelings and cores, stuff which when made cost the firm one and a half cents a pound—and this they sold as apple and currant jelly, selling hundreds of buckets. The government forced the firm to label the buckets correctly, and the sale became insignificant. Now, the poor need cheap foods, but it is not fair that they should have to pay more than a thing is worth; besides, such frauds interfere with the industry of the farmer’s wife who sells pure jelly.
The government now sends agents into every city, who buy from the shelves of grocers just what they offer for sale. The grocer, of course, does not recognize the government agent. The stuff is then sent to the laboratory, and the grocer and manufacturer notified as to results. The latter is told that his formula will be published, and before that is done he will be permitted to offer any statement that he may think advisable.
We are apt to think the “embalmed” meat agitation during the Spanish war will injure the trade of the country more than the war itself, but that agitation was right if it saved the health of even one soldier, and, above all, if it secures society in the future against deleterious canned meats.
It is well known, tho not approved by the government, that there are several canneries in the West where horse-flesh only is used. The government watches them closely and forces them to label the goods for just what they are. These goods are sent to such foreign countries as do not object to the use of horse-flesh.
Most States have stringent food laws, but so much food is sent from the State in which it is produced to another that State laws become inoperative.