There has been a lot in the news lately about horse meat being found in processed meat products. There is absolutely no excuse for this, and while I have no great problem with eating horse, I object to being sold (cheap) horse meat at (expensive) beef prices, and labelled as beef. A great fuss has been made, quite rightly, and the food industry is making a great show of smartening up its act. Good. But compared to some of the food scandals of the past, the horse meat episode pales to insignificance. A few years ago I attended a summer school run by the Oxford University Department of Continuing Education at Rewley House, on the social history of food. The subject I chose to write about for my course work essay was
Adulteration of food in Britain in the 19th Century and I'm getting some extra mileage out of it by repeating it here:
‘…the preparation of food has been gradually banished from
the cottage and the kitchen to the shop and the contractor’
H W Rumsey, in ‘Essays on State Medicine’
1856
For as long as food has been processed in any way, there
has been the potential for adulteration, either accidentally or deliberately.
It is human nature to hark back to a perceived Golden Age when food was pure,
wholesome, tasty and plentiful, but which never existed.
In 19th Century Britain
there was a great deal of concern about the adulteration of food, drink and
medicines. Much was written in the press, there were official reports, and
eventually Acts of Parliament. The practice was by no means new, but excited
particular public interest in that century. Rumsey’s quote above makes the
point that no-one will knowingly contaminate their own food supply, but when an
intermediary is involved both the means and the motive for adulteration can
appear. The greater the distance between producer and consumer, the less
control the latter has over the food they consume, and this is often
accompanied by a decrease in knowledge of what good wholesome food should be.
Even those who bought most of their food from shops in a small community were
less likely to suffer at the hands of someone who was a neighbour, and who had
a reputation to lose. A large and faceless manufacturer selling to a distant
customer base, through one or more intermediaries, was in a different position
altogether. The increasing industrialization and urbanization of British
society meant that more and more people were in no position to produce even
part of their own food, and by 1851 the urban population was now the majority.
Another feature was the development of food processing on an industrial scale,
partly because the technical means existed, and partly because of the size of
the market where the products could be sold.
The Victorian age was also one that became increasingly
preoccupied with gathering statistics, especially in the matter of public
health. This was not the reason for the establishment of the General Register
Office in 1836, but under George Graham and his deputy Dr William Farr from the
1840s to 1870s this became one of its major functions. At around the same time Edwin Chadwick took
up the cause of sanitary reform, and a number of public and semi-public bodies
commissioned inquiries into aspects of public health.
One of the first
investigators to conduct a detailed study into the adulteration of food and drink
was the chemist Friedrich Accum, who published ‘
A Treatise on Adulterations of Food, and
Culinary Poisons Exhibiting the Fraudulent Sophistications of Bread, Beer,
Wine, Spiritous Liquors, Tea, Coffee, Cream, Confectionery, Vinegar, Mustard,
Pepper, Cheese, Olive Oil, Pickles, and Other Articles Employed in Domestic
Economy and methods of detecting them’ in 1820. As the length of the title suggests,
he was nothing if not thorough. The
frontispiece rather dramatically featured an illustration with the biblical
quotation ‘There is Death in the Pot, and the book sold out in a month. Accum
described in detail the systematic adulteration of many commodities included
staples such as bread and milk. Some of the abuses were relatively harmless,
such as the addition of chicory, which was cheap, to coffee, which was
expensive. This was dishonest, but not a danger to health, even when the
chicory itself was further adulterated with even cheaper roasted carrots or
turnips and burnt sugar. Some people even preferred a coffee and chicory
mixture to the real thing. Much more serious was the practice of using toxic
lead, copper or mercury salts to make sweets and jellies more colourful to
attract children. It was also common practice to add equally poisonous
vegetable substances such as quassia and nux vomica to beer and porter to
impart a bitter taste. These and others were actually recommended in
‘Every
Man His Own Brewer’ published in 1790, although the sale of these poisons
was illegal by the time Accum was writing, but the law was hard to enforce
owing to the absence of reliable means of testing for them until the 1820s.
Accum’s writing provided actual
evidence of practices that many people had long suspected, and demonstrated
that abuse was also more widespread than they previously thought.
Unfortunately, this did not lead to immediate action for a variety of reasons.
Accum lost public support when he was accused of mutilating books in his care
in the Library of the Royal Institution. He returned to his native Germany
under a cloud of suspicion, and it was not until ten years later that a
campaign was started by Thomas Wakley, editor of The Lancet when he
commissioned an article on the poisons in coloured sweets, which had become
even worse since Accum’s investigation. However the next really significant
contribution was the work of Arthur Hill Hassall, whose research in the 1850s
continued what Accum had begun, starting with an examination of coffee samples.
He also showed that the microscope was a serious research tool, particularly
useful in identifying foreign vegetable matter, and insects, living and dead.
Where Accum had published the names of vendors who were prosecuted for selling
adulterated goods, Hassall went one stage further and published the names of everyone
from whom he had bought samples, and whether or not they proved to be
contaminated. It is interesting to note that none of the offenders succeeded in
suing him.
As a result of Hassall’s work, a
Parliamentary Commission of Enquiry was set up and the first Food Adulteration
Act was passed in 1860. This was revised and greatly strengthened by a further
Act in 1872. However, like Accum before him, Hassall did not have universal
support; the publishers of ‘Enquire Within Upon Everything’ accused him
of exaggerating and scaremongering, for example. Others agreed, and pointed out
that most adulterants were not actually harmful in themselves, such as water
and flour in milk. This is true enough, but the consequences could still be
devastating if it was fed to babies. In 1856 Chambers’ Journal pointed out that
some of the responsibility must lie with the consumer who demanded cheap and
varied food, with no questions asked. In general, however, the tide of opinion
was with him, and food became somewhat safer as a result. One of the best
illustrations of this is that manufacturers began to appeal to the public
desire for pure and wholesome food through their advertisements. Many claimed
that their products were endorsed by Dr Hassall, which may or may not have been
true, and emphasised the virtues of their uniform production and packaging, of
the ‘None genuine without this signature’ variety. The Aerated Bread Company
promoted their highly mechanized method of production by emphasizing its
hygienic nature.
There was (and is) a long way to
go to recreate the hypothetical Golden Age. There is the continual cycle of
improvements and additives that subsequently turn out to be harmful, for one
thing. In fairness to food manufacturers, they often believed that additives
actually improved the quality of the food, and well as their profits, and did
not realise that they might be harmful. They were probably telling the truth at
least some of the time. Research by men like Accum and Hassall also showed up
contamination that was accidental, ranging from ignorance or carelessness to
gross negligence, such as lead leaking into the water supply from pipes, or
into olive oil from the plates used to press the fruit. Not that it takes an
analytical chemist to work out that it you leave dry goods uncovered in your
shop or factory they will soon be augmented with insects, mouse droppings and
the like.
Awareness of food adulteration
increased in the 19
th Century because of improved scientific
methods, matched by concern about it and other public health issues. There was
certainly a great deal to be concerned about, mainly as a result of
industrialization and urbanization. Ironically, however, once public opinion
was alerted to the dangers market forces proved effective in improving the
situation. The power of advertising indeed.
There is an interesting, and much more scholarly, article on the
Royal Society of Chemistry site.
Footnote
Much more recently, I came across an intriguing story while on a open-top bus tour of Chicago; it was claimed that the cause of food safety owes a debt to none other than Al Capone! The story goes that a member of his family became ill after drinking milk that was past its best, and he used his power and influence in Chicago to enforce the use of 'sell-by' dates. I have seen this story, and variants of it, in a number of places, but I haven't been able to verify it. I do hope it's true, though.
