Foods, their composition and analysis : a manual for the use of analytical chemists and others : with an introductory essay on the history of adulteration / by Alexander Wynter Blyth.

Date:: 1882

Credit: Foods, their composition and analysis : a manual for the use of analytical chemists and others : with an introductory essay on the history of adulteration / by Alexander Wynter Blyth. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

Cover

97/674 (page 63)

$THE DUTY OF THE INSPECTOR. Go § so.] \ and in case of a refusal to sell, lie should then present his card, or declare that lie is an inspector duly appointed to carry out the Act, and call the attention of the seller to Section 17, and tender the price of the ai'ticle sold. If the seller still refuses to sell, then the purchaser evidently has a case under the Act, and should proceed accordingly. The official purchaser should not select to the exclusion of others the poorest shops, hut take samples as equally as possible. The purchase of samples need not be effected in an officious manner, nor is it just, for example, to enter a shop when full of people, and with ostentation buy and divide the sample before the customers, for an injury may thus be done to an honest tradesman ; the people in the shop might naturally think, in such a case, that the tradesman’s goods were “ things suspect.” There are indeed always two ways of doing a thing, and a little politeness and civility will in no way interfere with the execution of duty, or the carrying out of the Act. The official purchaser will probably be abused occasionally in no measured terms, but he must endeavour to keep his temper, and it is advisable to say as little as possible, and not to retort in any way. The sample retained by the purchaser must be locked up in a drawer or place to which no one else could have access without the key. Inspectors should from time to time consult the analyst as to what samples would be advisable to take for analysis. There are many substances—e.g., white sugar—which are so seldom adulterated that it is scarcely worth while obtaining samples of such, unless there has been some information laid relative to their quality. In taking samples of milk in the street, as before stated (p. 55), it is of no use for the inspector to stop the milk-seller while actually carrying his cans from door to door, but he must buy it at a place of delivery; for example, he could not take a sample from an itinerant milk-seller legally while the milk-seller was going from one door to another, but directly the milk-seller stops at any door, he may then demand a sample and tender the money for it, because then the milk is being delivered. He may also go to a railway station, and take samples of milk from the cans themselves; in the latter case, it does not appear necessary to divide the sample into three parts, but the analyst will be obliged to divide it into two, and give the inspector one. (See p. 57.)$