No. 6. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE; 21 



acid is not injurious to healtli, and that boracic acid compounds and 

 benzoate of soda are harmless ingredients of food. Thus doctors 

 disagree. Has medicine still to depend upon opinions, or guessing, 

 in matters such as these? Why should medical testimony, on sub- 

 jects so inii)ortant conflict among men who have graduated from the 

 same school of medicine, and have had equal opportunities to ob- 

 serve? Pure food officers, judges and juries are dependent upon 

 you, for testimony as to the effects of ingredients found in food, 

 upon the public health. We can go no further than you permit. A 

 bill was before the last Legislature to protect meat from adultera- 

 tion by the use of salicylic acid, and it failed, because eminent physi- 

 cians declared, before the committee of the Senate, that they used 

 it in their practice with no harmful effects upon the public health. 

 The Department recently lost an important case in which borax 

 had been used, through the evidence of local physicians who did 

 not think it harmful as a preservative of butter. 



"Would it not be well for this Society, to appoint a committee 

 of its most experienced members, to take up the question of the 

 effects of the various substances now employed for the preservation 

 and adulteration of our foods, and report their conclusions to this 

 body at its meeting in 1903? The field of food adulteration is a wide 

 one, and needs investigation more, perhaps, than any other. The 

 duty, sooner or later, must fall upon you, and I urge that you do not 

 defer, but take it up at once, and aid in settling, once for all, all 

 doubt as to the character of these substances, that are now so 

 freely and indiscriminately used, to dose our foods. 



"The officers who enforce the food laws in this State must face 

 the difficult questions which continually arise in the matter of the 

 coloring and preserving of foods as well as the right of manufac- 

 turers to low^er or depreciate their value, through the addition of 

 cheaper substances of inferior grade. Many of these questions are 

 pathological in their character, and require for their proper answer, 

 knowledge which only experts and specialists can supply. If a prop- 

 erly qualified board, made up of memliers of your society, were ap- 

 pointed, these questions could be referred to them, and their reply 

 would often determine the action which should be taken." 



In response to this request the Society passed the following res- 

 olution: 



" Whereas^ The Department of Agriculture of the State of Pennsyl- 

 vania through its work in the examination of food, discloses the fact, 

 that there are in the general market, foods that either are below 

 the standard of commercial value, or those that are adulterated by 

 the mixture of poisonous or injurious matters, either to increase the 

 profit, change the color and texture, or to unduly preserve from 



