Search results

Few retailers appreciate the extent and cost of fires in the retail distribution sector, but some indication can be seen from the fact that each year 30,000 retail businesses are burnt down. The fire risk to retail property is worsening due to ever bigger shops. If you are the victim of a serious fire, the consequences can be horrendous. Enforced closures while shops are rebuilt and moves made to temporary premises inevitably lead to a loss of customers, trade and employees. It may take years for shops to regain their pre‐fire trading levels — some have even been forced out of business. This article outlines what sensible precautions can be taken to reduce fire risk.

Given the size of the Australian population the regional output of publications is impressive. The Australian National Bibliography, compiled and published by the National Library of Australia, includes in its annual volume a statistical survey of Australian book production. The latest figures available are those for 1976 and a comparative table for the preceding five year period shows a modest rate of growth. The titles of specific Australian interest published overseas are also shown. I have added figures for 1977 based on still unpublished information.

THE Blackpool Conference has been duly held; Lord Elgin has handed his office to his successor, Dr. Lindsay; and a presidential address, full of sound commonsense and useful thought, has been delivered which has been ignored in its essentials by the popular press and inflated in respect of a jest which preceded it. As for the general results of the discussions, they are difficult to assess. Certainly useful work was done. On the “local” side the meeting was completely successful. The nights were illuminated by the wonderful autumn light‐show in which Blackpool surpasses England; in the receptions, amusements and facilities afforded no conference assembly has been entertained more royally.

The Food and Drugs Bill introduced by the Government affords an excellent illustration of the fact that repressive legislative enactments in regard to adulteration must always be of such a nature that, while they give a certain degree and a certain kind of protection to the public, they can never be expected to supply a sufficiently real and effective insurance against adulteration and against the palming off of inferior goods, nor an adequate and satisfactory protection to the producer and vendor of superior articles. In this country, at any rate, legislation on the adulteration question has always been, and probably will always be of a somewhat weak and patchy character, with the defects inevitably resulting from more or less futile attempts to conciliate a variety of conflicting interests. The Bill as it stands, for instance, fails to deal in any way satisfactorily with the subject of preservatives, and, if passed in its present form, will give the force of law to the standards of Somerset House—standards which must of necessity be low and the general acceptance of which must tend to reduce the quality of foods and drugs to the same dead‐level of extreme inferiority. The ludicrous laissez faire report of the Beer Materials Committee—whose authors see no reason to interfere with the unrestricted sale of the products of the “ free mash tun,” or, more properly speaking, of the free adulteration tun—affords a further instance of what is to be expected at present and for many years to come as the result of governmental travail and official meditations. Public feeling is developing in reference to these matters. There is a growing demand for some system of effective insurance, official or non‐official, based on common‐sense and common honesty ; and it is on account of the plain necessity that the quibbles and futilities attaching to repressive legislation shall by some means be brushed aside that we have come to believe in the power and the value of the system of Control, and that we advocate its general acceptance. The attitude and the policy of the INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON ADULTERATION, of the BRITISH FOOD JOURNAL, and of the BRITISH ANALYTICAL CONTROL, are in all respects identical with regard to adulteration questions; and in answer to the observations and suggestions which have been put forward since the introduction of the Control System in England, it may be well once more to state that nothing will meet with the approbation or support of the Control which is not pure, genuine, and good in the strictest sense of these terms. Those applicants and critics whom it may concern may with advantage take notice of the fact that under no circumstances will approval be given to such articles as substitute beers, separated milks, coppered vegetables, dyed sugars, foods treated with chemical preservatives, or, in fact, to any food or drug which cannot be regarded as in every respect free from any adulterant, and free from any suspicion of sophistication or inferiority. The supply of such articles as those referred to, which is left more or less unfettered by the cumbrous machinery of the law, as well as the sale of those adulterated goods with which the law can more easily deal, can only be adequately held in check by the application of a strong system of Control to justify approbation, providing, as this does, the only effective form of insurance which up to the present has been devised.

Europe is most desperately in need of the products of which there is a world‐wide shortage—fats and oils, meat and sugar. The problem of supplying wheat is not expected to be so serious. A special committee on food operating under authority of the Inter‐Agency Committee on Foreign Shipments estimates that liberated Europe requires imports of approximately the following quantities by the end of this year: Fats and oils, 800,000 tons; sugar, 800,000 tons; milk, 186,000 tons; wheat 8,000,000 tons; meat, poultry and cheese, 650,000 tons. However, these figures do not include any important needs for Italy, which was scheduled to receive 1,618,600 tons before the miltary relief programme ended, and which will need much more in the coming year. This brings fats and oil consumption up to only 90 per cent. of the pre‐war level, raises milk and meat supplies by only 10 per cent. of the pre‐war level, and allows only 22 lbs. of sugar per person. The analysis of need in Europe has given weight to two important considerations; (1) Basic physiological needs, and (2) customary habits of consumption. The latter is reflected in the pre‐war diets of the people of the liberated countries. In estimating the needs of Europeans for the coming year—taking both physiological needs and pre‐war habits into consideration, the Committee was concerned with food of four basic groups: fats and oils, proteins, sugar and wheat. (1) Fats and Oils. Nutritional authorities throughout the world agree that there is an urgent physiological need for a minimum quantity of fats as an element in the diets of all populations. This may be either “visible fat”—such as butter, or shortening used in cooking other foods, or it may be “invisible fats,” from other foods, such as meat, eggs, fish and milk. The Inter‐Allied Post‐War Requirements Bureau, set up in London prior to the establishment of U.N.R.R.A. and made up of representatives of the United Nations, states that just under 20 lbs. a year is the base level of visible fat needs. The nutrient values group of the combined working party on European food supplies (composed of representatives from the liberated areas as consultants) reported that 20 per cent. of the total calories obtained from a diet should come from fat and not less than half of this should come from “visible fat.” Thus, to provide 10 per cent. of 2,000 calories, which was the minimum target set by military authorities, to prevent disease and unrest in the urban civilian populations during the period of military operations would require just under 20 lbs. of fat from butter, margarine, shortening, lard and oils. (2) High Quality Protein Foods. This group includes meat, fish, poultry, eggs, dairy products other than butter, and (dried beans, peas, lentils, etc). Dairy products are measured, not in terms of the fluid content, but of the milk solids contained in them. Meats are the high quality protein foods for which the most urgent demands are expressed in the liberated countries, but some other foods, on a lb.‐for‐lb. basis, will provide equal or greater quantities of protein. About 20 grammes per day is commonly referred to as the minimum quantity of high quality protein on which a person can remain healthy over a considerable period; to reduce consumption below that amount in most countries means malnutrition. For purposes of estimating the minimum essential quantities of protein needed, the United Nations have made computations on the basis of 40 kilograms per head per year—or roughly 88 lbs. of quality protein foods. (3) Sugar. The need for sugar, a concentrated source of energy, seems to rest on both psychological and physiological importance. Food authorities state that curtailments of consumptions of the very low levels that prevail throughout the war in most countries cause particular inconvenience and create the acutest sense of deprivation. The United Nations food authorities, therefore, in computing the sugar needs of the liberated areas, have drawn up tables to show the imports needed to bring countries up to 22 lbs. per year, or to pre‐war levels if they were below 22 lbs. (4) Wheat. Wheat and other cereals must make up the calorie deficits remaining after the minimum supplies of fats and oils proteins and sugar have been provided in the diet. In most European nations, cereals have played a more dominant part in the average diet than has been true in the United States.

THIS being the beginning of a New Year, we are apt to reminisce. We search our memory for past happenings that might just possibly be a pointer for the future.

A country no stronger than its information As a result of the new Gramm‐Rudman‐Hollings law which mandates a balanced federal budget by 1991 (a cut of $9.9m), and an $8.4 in budget reduction by Congress, the Library of Congress is suffering a total cutback of 7.6% from last year. This means a loss of $1 in every $13. The total number of hours open will be reduced by 30% per week; evening and weekend hours by 59%. The Library will be unable to purchase some 80 000 new books.

Van Helmont considered he had found it in water, and thus records his famous Brussels experiment:

DURING the three years I have attended the meetings of this branch association, papers of so interesting a character have been read that I am well aware of the difficulty each paper reader must have in keeping up the standard. But as my subject seems a good one, you may be inclined to overlook an indifferent treatment of it.