COPPER-GREENING IN FRANCE. 1049 



lation would be far more difficult of detection f Who will answer for the mistakes 

 and carelessness which pertain to every industrial process? 



From the point of view regarding public health, two considerations dominate all 

 others: (1) salts of copper are poisonous; (2) their addition imparts no useful qual- 

 ity to the food, but only a factitious color intended to mislead the consumer. Even 

 if there were no other methods of preparing these foods than this, this one would be 

 inadmissible but there are others. 



If those now known do not prove satisfactory, and the demand for green Vegetables 

 should still continue, it is not too much to require of the science and industry of 

 otir packers that they should find a process for securing the desired results without 

 the use of questionable means. 



So far from the practice tending to promote foreign commerce, it is injuring it. 

 In England dealers are already being prosecuted for selling French peas. The sus- 

 picion cast upon the products will, if perpetuated, certainly work only harm to our 

 foreign trade. 



Can the Government, which, in the interests of foreign commerce and of the health 

 of children, pushes its foresight so far as to forbid the sale of toys colored with 

 poisonous pigments, sanction the staining of a common article of food with sulphate 

 of copper? 



The report was accepted and the prohibition of the use of copper re- 

 newed. 



M. Bussy again appears on the scene in the next year, 1878, as a 

 member of another commission to investigate the copper question, his 

 colleagues this time being MM. Wurtz and Gavarret. 



It appears that MM. Lecourt, a canner, and Guillemare, a professor 

 of chemistry at Bheims, addressed a joint petition to the minister of 

 agriculture and commerce. The substance of the document was that 

 the petitioners had discovered a method of greening peas not depend- 

 ent upon the use of copper salts, and wished the full rigor of the law 

 brought to bear upon the other canners who still used copper. Abbre- 

 viating this petition it reads as follows: 1 



We have found a method capable of imparting to leguminous preserves the green 

 color required by commerce, yet not involving any dangerous substance. The 

 process is applicable on the large scale, is salubrious, and does not, like the 

 present process, involve the salts of copper so justly prohibited by law. We 

 demand in consequence that the administration, after convincing itself of the value 

 of the proposed process, in the interest not only of justice but of public hygiene, rig- 

 orously enforce the laws against the employment of copper salts for greening vege- 

 tables. 



Ought we, in the presence of a tolerance which permits our competitors to manu- 

 facture vegetables greened by the inexpensive copper process a practice which is, 

 according to the Comite d'hygieue, a true fraud ought we to persevere in the use 

 of a process which, under these conditions, is unprofitable and irksome? We think 

 not. 



We beg the minister to submit our process of greening by chlorophyl to the Con- 

 seil d'hygiene. We believe that our method would meet with approbation. We 

 would further ask that the laws which regulate the matter of copper greening be 

 rigorously enforced. 



The petitioners' process consisted in the addition to the vegetables 

 to be greened of an alkaline solution of chlorophyl, preferably extracted 

 from spinach. 



1 Recueil dea trav. du Comite" consultatif d'hygiene publique, 1878, 8, 366. 



