June, ' 18] 
DOANE: STORED FOOD INSECTS 
317 
sent to one. If it is not possible to attend to this at once, or if it is 
necessary to move the infested material from one place to another, it is 
worth while to first clean the outsides of the sacks or other containers, 
in order that the insects may not be spread about in the moving. 
The managers of some mills believe they have taken sufficient pre¬ 
cautions to prevent the spread of the Mediterranean flour moth when 
they place infested lots of flour some distance away from other flour. 
One warehouse man told me that when he found any food stuffs in¬ 
fested with insects he always put a ring of hydrated lime around the 
infested lot to prevent the spread of the pest to other parts of the 
house. Another man was found to be using formaldehyde for fumi¬ 
gating a room badly infested with rice weevils and he could not under¬ 
stand why the beetles kept spreading. 
Such “protective” measures are dangerous, not only because they do 
not kill the insects, but because they either give the experimenter a false 
sense of security or else he becomes discouraged and gives up altogether* 
It is an easy matter for us to carry on a series of experiments with 
these insects, and to find that under certain conditions, that we have 
well under control, we can kill all or nearly all of the pests with which 
we are working. But as soon as we get out into the warehouses and 
mills, we begin to meet with serious difficulties. Let me give a concrete 
example: The warehouse previously referred to, where 2,000 or 3,000 
sacks of infested flour was found, also had about 20,000 other sacks 
that were infested very lightly or not at all. This flour belonged to 
some twenty-seven different owners and was scattered throughout the 
warehouse. Stored with the flour, or close to it, was to be found many 
other kinds of food stuffs. Some of the owners of the flour believed 
that the warehouseman should fumigate his house and kill the insects, 
others objected because they were afraid that the flour or other foods 
might be injured by being fumigated. 
The manager was told that the Board of Underwriters had said that 
anyone fumigating with carbon bisulphide would do so at his own risk, 
as his insurance would not cover the risk from fire if he had such ma¬ 
terials in his house. On account of the danger to foodstuffs containing 
a great deal of moisture he could not use cyanide and the house was 
not tight enough for fumigating purposes anyway. There was no 
provision for heating the house by steam or otherwise. What should 
the poor man do? While he was seeking an answer to this question, 
the condition of the badly infested flour was called to the attention of 
the Pure Food Inspectors of the Bureau of Chemistry. They ruled 
that much of it was unfit for human food and the owners agreed to sell 
the most of it for stock food or for making paste for bill-posting pur¬ 
poses, and to reprocess the rest and thus save as much as possible. 
