12 COAL-TAB COLORS USED IN FOOD PRODUCTS. 



how many are or are not harmful, nor can the risk forced upon the] 

 public health be satisfactorily measured. 



This brief summary must suffice for the present as a justification I 

 for the restrictions of the permitted colors to 7 in number. The full! 

 reasons for each and every step will appear in their proper places in| 

 the pages following. 



QUALITY AND EFFICIENCY OF COLORS PERMITTED. 



An examination of 30 specimens representative of the 7 selected 

 permitted colors on the United States market in the summer off 

 1907 disclosed such a condition of uncleanliness of product, or care-| 

 less or improper manufacture, and the use of such utterly inferior! 

 qualities of products for food coloring purposes, that control overl 

 the quality of the seven permitted colors seemed necessary. The! 

 results of the work in the making and maintaining of standards of I 

 quality for each of these seven colors also justify this control. That! 

 there was in 1907, and for a year or more later, a considerable diver-l 

 gence of opinion among chemists as to what should be the proper! 

 quality requirements for these colors is shown by the fact that out! 

 of 72 foundation certificates offered in accordance with Food Inspec-l 

 tion Decisions Nos. 76 and 77, 57 were rejected on their face because! 

 they did not comply with the standards of quality then in mind,! 

 or then shown to be commercially attainable. Much objection has! 

 been made by many of those whose certificates were rejected on the! 

 ground that the standards then in mind were unreasonable, unjusti-l 

 fiable, and nonattainable. The actual results, however, are that! 

 with very few exceptions the standards in mind early in the worki 

 have all been exceeded in practice; the 41,000 pounds (20.5 tons)! 

 of certified colors now in existence made in 97 batches, or an average! 

 of more than 420 pounds per batch, are, with the exception of perhaps! 

 one or two first batches, far cleaner than was expected when the 571 

 certificates above referred to were rejected. 



There has been no complaint against the permitted colors for wantl 

 of efficiency or for the possession of unsuitable attributes, which has! 

 been pressed or sustained with any such earnestness as would rea-j 

 sonably be expected if the defects complained of were as great as! 

 they were represented. Complaints have been made against the! 

 yellow, when used in acidulated fruit sirups, on account of its pos-| 

 sessing a bitter taste ; the proof of this, so far as any has been offered, 

 was for a long time not of a convincing nature, and it was two years I 

 after the first objection was raised before any concerted or positive! 

 action was taken by those interested. The yellow has also been 

 criticized because it is not sufficiently fast to light; although it was 

 satisfactorily shown that another yellow was faster to light than the I 

 permitted yellow, no one has maintained that the yellow desired 1 



