"5. If it consists wholly or in part of diseased or decomposed or putrid or rotten animal or vegetable substance, whether manufactured or not, or in the case of milk, if it is the produce of a diseased animal.

"6. If it be colored, or coated, or polished, or powdered, whereby damage is concealed, or it is made to appear better than it really is, or of greater value.

"7. If it contain any added poisonous ingredient, or any ingredient which may render such article injurious to the health of the person consuming it. Provided that an article of food which does not contain any ingredient injurious to health shall not be deemed to have been adulterated, in the case of mixtures or compounds which may be now, or from time to time hereafter, known as articles of food under their own distinctive names, or which shall be labeled so as to plainly indicate that they are mixtures, combinations, compounds, or blends, and not included in definition fourth of this section.

"8. If it contains methyl or wood alcohol or any of its forms, or any methylated preparation made from it."

These provisions, just mentioned, are provisions of the New York State Health Law, and violations are in defiance of that law, the penalties for which are specifically stated to be $100 for every such violation.

There is also in New York a police code that prohibits adulteration of food, and in this code the adulteration of maple sirup or fruit juices or spoiled articles of food of all sorts, of milk from which part of the cream has been removed, and the sale of any article which is printed or labeled in such a way as to misrepresent the article, is called a misdemeanor, the penalty for which is left to the discretion of the judge and which would, under ordinary conditions, be a fine of several hundred dollars or imprisonment in a county jail for a term of months, or both.

Basis of pure food laws.

Adulteration of food may be considered from two points of view, the hygienic and the economic, and, while the laws are generally intended to preserve the public from impure food on account of the economic loss involved thereby, the hygienic aspect is really the more important. Adulterations which are plainly injurious to health are very few in number, and it is rather desirable that the economic phase should be the one to command attention of legislators, since, when that objection to adulteration has been so voiced as to result in laws prohibiting adulteration, the health of the public will be promoted by the elimination of objectionable foodstuffs. The long-continued discussion over the use of benzoate of soda in foods is an example of this twofold aspect; some, arguing against its use, protested that when long continued, it had a decidedly injurious effect upon the health of those eating or drinking it; others objected to the chemical, but contended that its use enabled spoiled fruits, like tomatoes, to be substituted for fresh fruits, and the price of the latter obtained where the value of the former only was given. No one seriously thinks that butter with a small amount of butter color added could have any injurious effect upon the human system, yet it is, in the eyes of the law, an adulteration because its appearance indicates a quality of the butter which it does not naturally possess.

PROTECTION OF MILK

The one article of food produced on the farm about which the greatest amount of agitation has been centered has been the adulteration of milk, as well as the question of the production of milk under unclean conditions. The responsibility for pure milk rests on the Department of Agriculture of the State, on the Department of Health of the State, on the Department of Health of the city where the milk is sold, and on the Board of Health in the village or town where the milk is produced. In a way, these four departments divide the responsibility for the milk, and, as in all cases of divided responsibility, the very fact of the number subtracts from their efficiency. The local Board of Health of the village or town where milk is produced is not usually interested or concerned particularly in the question of its quality.