No. 6. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 81 



variety of materials lias been included, and that in certain compara- 

 tively rare j^rodiicts, such, for example, as bread sausage (brodwurst), 

 bread crumbs were esseniial ingredients. It was clear, however, that 

 the addition of such materials to ihe general body of products recog- 

 nized under the name "sausage," Avas abnormal, and generally re- 

 garded, even in Germany, the home of sausage, as an abuse. The 

 objection to the introduction of starchy substances, such as cereals 

 and vegetable flour, is not, of course, owing to objections to them as 

 unfit for food, or as absolutely lacking in food value, but because they 

 replace and, especially with the water they hold, make possible the 

 omission of very considerable quantities of the normal sausage sub- 

 stance, meat. The result is that the consumer, who buys the sausage, 

 is deceived. He supposes that he is securing for his use, a purely 

 meat product, except for the seasoning used in the sausage mixture, 

 when, as a matter of fact, he is made to pay meat price for starchy 

 substances, costing at wholesale not more than three cents per pound, 

 and for much larger quantities of water, costing the manufacturer 

 practically nothing. This condition is manifestly undesirable. 



In fairness to the manufacturer, his arguments for the use of these 

 materials ought here to be stated. He claims, in the first place, that, 

 during the operation of chopping the meat and seasoning it, to fit it 

 for making high quality sausage, it is necessaiily exposed, in a finely 

 divided condition, to the air, and thereby loses a considerable portion 

 of its normal water content, and that, consequently, it becomes too 

 dry to reduce to a mass of such consistence that it can not readily be 

 stuffed, by the customary processes, into the delicate casings and that 

 it is necessary, therefore, to add water sufficient to bring the sausage 

 mass to a consistence fitting it for stuffing. The Legislature, in i)assing 

 the sausage act, recognized that there was a measure of fairness in 

 this claim of the manufacturer, and, therefore, prohibited the addi- 

 tion of water only in excess of those quantities needed to bring the 

 meats back to the moisture conditions normal to fresh meats of the 

 kind used, believing that no further tolerance of added water is 

 necessary to the manufacturer who prepares a sausage meat of the 

 usual tissues, used in common proportions, one to the other. 



It may be stated at this point that, in fixing this limit of tolerance 

 for added water, the Legislature was not making a provision that is 

 incapable of reasonable enforcement, since it is possible to determine, 

 by chemical means, the fact that water is or is not present in excess 

 of the amount normal to fresh meats. Such meats vary very much 

 in moisture, it is true, according as they are derived from, fat or lean 

 animals, but the moisture supply in the meat tissue bears a quite con- 

 stant relation to the nitrogenous substances of the meat, so that by 

 determining both the amount of moisture present in the sausage, and 

 also the quantity of nitrogen, it is practicable to discover wide depart- 

 ures from the normal relation between these two substances. 



The manufacturer has urged that the use of starchy ingredients 

 in sausage has been quite general in this country, and that the length 

 of time during which it has been thus used, as well as the large pro- 

 portion of sausage makers Avho have followed this practice, should be 

 regarded as having established for the sausage manufacturer a right 

 to such practice. There is, however, no evidence to show that the 

 consumer has been, at all generally, aware that under the name 

 6—6—1911 



