334 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE Off. Doc. 



caused an advance in the value of selling price of the various grades 

 of commercial feeding stuffs ofiered for sale in our State. Because 

 of this situation, therefore, there has been a temptation on the part 

 of some feed manufacturers to discover and use some cheap by-pro- 

 ducts for use as ingredients in feeds, which perhaps has little feed- 

 ing value, in order to take advantage of the rise in market value in 

 feeds and also, if possible, to offer for sale feeds at less prices. We 

 are glad to report, however, that the majority of manufacturers are 

 complying with the requirements of the law and co-operating with 

 the Department in its eifort to keep the character of feeds sold in 

 the State of good quality and properly labeled. 



In order that you may know of the amount of work accomplished 

 by the Department in enforcing the feeding stuffs law, it seems 

 proper to include this information in this report. During the year 

 1914, special agents of the Department visited 827 towns and cities 

 and 61 counties of the State and obtained 1,300 samples of the vari- 

 ous brands of feeding stuffs found being offered for sale. All these 

 these samples were sent to the Chemical Laboratory and analyzed 

 chemically to see if the guarantees were properly given ; and they 

 were also examined with a microscope to find out if the ingredients 

 claimed were really present in each case. Foreign or impure ma- 

 terials were also looked for and where such were found, in addition 

 to the ingredients claimed, a report was made to the Secretary of 

 these findings, together with the results of examination of all sam- 

 ples, and also included in the annual feed bulletin. A number of 

 towns and cities were visited where samples were not taken, as it 

 was found by the special agents that the feeds being offered for sale 

 appeared to be properly labeled and guaranteed, and also because 

 it was thought unnecessary to get too many samples of the same 

 brand or class of feeds. 



The character of the feeds, judged from the samples analyzed in 

 the Laboratory, was good and the number of feeds found adulterated 

 was less than' formerly, which goes to show that the rigid enforce- 

 ment of the feeding stuffs law has been of great value to the farm- 

 ers and consumers of feeds in our State. The number of prosecu- 

 tions necessary for misbranding or adulterated feeds gets less and 

 less, each year. However it is still necessary to keep a watchful eye 

 on all the' various brands of feeds which are being sold, otherwise 

 there is likely to be a number of brands of adulterated feeds sent into 

 our State. This work is especially necessary because there are 20 

 states, some of which have no feed laws at all, and some of which, 

 while they do have laws, the ingredients of mixed feeds are not 

 required to be placed on sacks or attached cards. As long as this 

 condition exists there will be feeds sold in these states of inferior 

 quality and we must be continually on the watch to make sure that 

 they do not get into Pennsylvania. One such case occurred during 

 the year where a molasses feed was shii)ped from a western state to 

 one of our feed dealers which contained 25% of ground peanut hulls. 

 The Chief Chemist of the Department, who has been appointed by 

 the Federal Government as a Special Agent of Pennsylvania, was in 

 a position to report this case to the Federal authorities who im- 

 mediately got samples of this feed and took action against the 

 manufacturers in the West and thus this form of misrepresenta- 

 tion was stopped so far as our State was concerned. We now have 



