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No milk to be sold from newly‐calved cows, nor until three days after the calf has been removed.

Of late there has been a controversy among medical men upon the question of whether or not the cooking of food in aluminium receptacles may result in injury to health. Quite recently there were three letters upon this subject in one issue of the “British Medical Journal.” There are those who see in this practice a real and serious danger; others who deny the existence of any such danger; and there are many who entertain doubts upon the subject.

We deeply regret to announce the death, on October 4th, of Mr. William Thomson, F.R.S., F.I.C., Director of the Royal Institution Laboratory, Manchester, and Public Analyst for Stockport.—Mr. Thomson was associated with the “BRITISH FOOD JOURNAL” from the time when the Journal was established, and was a member of the Consulting Scientific Staff of the British Analytical Control.

This chapter develops a framework for quantile regression in binary longitudinal data settings. A novel Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) method is designed to fit the model and its computational efficiency is demonstrated in a simulation study. The proposed approach is flexible in that it can account for common and individual-specific parameters, as well as multivariate heterogeneity associated with several covariates. The methodology is applied to study female labor force participation and home ownership in the United States. The results offer new insights at the various quantiles, which are of interest to policymakers and researchers alike.

At a meeting of the Hull Corporation Health Committee, on November 22nd, the Town Clerk referred to the decision in the recent case of milk, alleged to have contained dirt. Originally the justices dismissed the summons on a legal point. The Corporation, prosecuting, asked for a case to be stated in the High Court, and the latter decided in the Corporation's favour, and sent the case back to the Hull magistrates to be heard on its merits. The evidence of the prosecution was that the milk contained 3·9 parts of dirt per 100,000 parts of milk, the far greater part of the sediment present consisting of manure. In previous cases prosecutions were secured where the dirt was slightly less, but this summons was dismissed on the ground that there was no standard laid down by law as to what amount of dirt might be permitted. If this was a reason for dismissal, then milk might be half dirt. That was absurd. The question was “What was the Corporation going to do?” He suggested that they should go on exactly as they were doing, take the cases, and place the responsibility on the justices. Perhaps if they went on a little longer they would get some idea at to what the Bench considered was such a state of contamination as to justify the local authority in taking action.

All enforcement of police regulations in every country, the result of which is a supposed encroachment upon personal rights or established prejudices, is attended with great difficulties. The Foods and Drugs Act of the United States, which became a law on the 30th of June, 1906, belongs to this category. The adulteration of foods and drugs had been carried on so long that it was deemed a vested right. The enactment of this law was finally permitted by the lobbies opposed to it in the hope and expectation that it would never be enforced. It so happened that I, as Chief of the Bureau of Chemistry, became the enforcing officer of this law by a provision thereof. Immediately I was besieged by interests supposed to be threatened, by strict enforcement, with such persistence and pertinacity as to lead me to believe that they had not expected any opposition on the part of the enforcing officers to their campaign of law paralysis. When they finally learned that it was hopeless to direct their attacks against me they immediately appealed to my superior officers, among them the Secretary of Agriculture, or Minister of Agriculture, as you say in your country, and then finally to the President of the United States. The first results of these appeals to higher authority were extremely favourable to the vested interests. The rulings of the Bureau of Chemistry forbidding the use of alum, saccharin, or chemical preservatives and other deleterious substances in food, were for the most part set aside by executive authority in direct contravention of the provisions of the law. This opposition extended also to spirits and beer. The definitions of the Bureau of Chemistry in regard to the purity of these articles were also contested and carried to my superior officers. The final result of all these appeals was that in many respects the food law was entirely paralysed. In regard to spirits, especially whisky, the contentions of the so‐called rectifiers were adopted as the legal definition of whisky in direct opposition to the provisions of the law and the opinions of the United States courts.

Frank cases of scurvy are easily recognised and are satisfactory to treat. Even in Western Europe cases are met with under ordinary conditions of life, but mostly in poor countries among those living alone and not caring for themselves properly. It has been advanced that while frank scurvy is admittedly practically unknown in civilised countries, yet minor degrees of vitamin C deficiency are responsible for much vague ill‐health and disease other than scurvy. This theory is difficult to prove, and proof is lacking.

We have observed in the reports of those engaged in the administration of the Acts several references to the practice of milking so that a portion of the milk is left in the udder of the cow, this portion being removed subsequently and not included in the milk sent out to customers. The inspector for the southern division of the county of Northampton reports that on a sample of milk being found deficient in fat to the extent of 17 per cent., a further sample was taken at the time of milking when a milkman was found to be not properly “stripping” the cows. He was warned. The analyst for the county of Notts writes: “The first strippings obtained before the milk glands have been normally excited by the milking are very low in fat yet are “genuine” milk in the sense that nothing has been added to or taken from it. It is nonsense to talk of genuine milk in the sense that everything that comes from the udder of the cow is to be taken as genuine milk fit for sale.” In a case tried before the Recorder of Middlesbrough, one witness said that among some farmers it was a common practice not to “strip” cows until after the milk was sent away.

The Medical Research Council has issued a special report by Dr. W. G. Savage and Mr. Bruce White on food poisoning, based upon a study of 100 recent outbreaks in this country, most of which have not been previously published. The Report is prefaced by a general survey of the different causes of outbreaks of food poisoning, the epidemiological and clinical features of food poisoning, the paths of infection, and prevention of food poisoning. The report is a continuation of the special investigations of Dr. Savage and Mr. White, published in the Medical Research Council Report No. 91, and entitled “An investigation of the salmonella group, with special reference to food poisoning,” which dealt chiefly with the classification and distribution of the salmonella bacteria. By far the commonest cause of food poisoning in this country is infection of food by living salmonella bacteria or by the toxins of these microbes. Salmonella bacteria multiply rapidly in food without betraying their presence by any obvious decomposition, and they secrete powerful endotoxins capable of resisting temperatures as high as 100° C. In 20 of the 100 outbreaks recorded in this report living salmonella bacteria were proved to be the agents of infection, and in 14 of these 20 outbreaks B. aertrycke was the particular member of the group found. The isolation of these bacilli is a difficult procedure, for they are factidious in their diet, and it is worth while noting, in view of the remarks we make elsewhere about the more thorough investigation of outbreaks of food poisoning, that in 6 of these outbreaks the bacilli were only captured from material obtained at post‐mortem examinations; if this material had not been available the bacterial cause would not have been definitely established, though deductions might, of course, have been made from other examinations. It is well known that food in which salmonella bacteria have grown may continue to be poisonous after the bacilli themselves have been destroyed, because the toxin which these germs secrete is more resistant to heat than are the living cells. Food poisoning by the toxins of the salmonella bacteria alone is perhaps the most difficult of all to analyse, because ingestion of these toxins leaves no specific stamp upon the body tissues: thus agglutinins do not appear in the blood serum. It might be thought that the poisonous nature of the food could be demonstrated by feeding experiments on animals, but this method is not often successful because animals are exceptionally resistant to these toxins. The method of injecting extracts of suspected food parenterally has led to many false conclusions in the past, and does not now command much confidence. A promising new method of study was referred to in Report 91—namely, the possibility of demonstrating toxic properties in food by feeding animals with large quantities, killing the animal nine to twelve hours afterwards, and examining the stomach and intestines for evidence of inflammatory reaction. Another new method which we believe Dr. Savage was the first to employ, at any rate on an extensive scale, is the demonstration of the production of specific agglutinins to the salmonella bacilli through the injection into animals of suitable emulsions of the incriminated food. By one method of investigation or another the authors of this report have satisfied themselves that 17 out of the 100 outbreaks should be ascribed to salmonella toxins. Four of the outbreaks were caused by bacteria of the dysentery group. The chief interest of this observation is that it widens our view of food poisoning, for until recently it would have been denied that bacteria of the dysentery type could cause outbreaks of food poisoning indistinguishable in their clinical characters from salmonella infections. Only one outbreak of botulism—that at Loch Maree—is presented in this series. To summarise the cause of these 100 outbreaks of food poisoning, epidemiological and laboratory investigations, separately or together, provided evidence that 66 outbreaks were due to members of the salmonella group of bacilli, 4 to members of the dysentery group, and 1 to B. botulinus. The remainder were either of definitely chemical origin, or possibly due to some undetected microbe, or were not examples of true food poisoning.

In a communication which appeared in The Times, and which Mr. Max Pemberton has also addressed to this Journal, Mr. Pemberton observes that during the Great War a Commercial Treaty was made between this country and its oldest ally, Portugal. One of the considerations for this Treaty was that Great Britain reserved to Portugal the sole right of use of the name “Port” to be applied to wines certified as such by the Portuguese Government. Before that Treaty there was no legal restriction of the use of the word “port,” which could be, and was, applied to cheap Spanish and even British wines—such as “Tarragona Port” and “British Port.” Unfortunately, in granting Portugal the exclusive right to the word “Port,” our Government made no stipulation as to the standard below which the Portuguese wines should not be certified as port, and, in effect, the Treaty bound the English law to follow the Portuguese law in this matter. Port is a strong wine made from vines grown on the banks of the Upper Douro, and “fortified” at the vintage by the addition of fine grape brandy. Its strength is a vital and distinctive characteristic, and at the time when the Treaty was made, and for very many years before that, the strength standard recognised by all reputable shippers was not under 35 per cent. of proof spirit. At the time of the Treaty, our wine duty was 2s. 6d. per dozen for wines up to 30 per cent., and 6s. per dozen for wines above that strength. so that all “recognised” ports then paid our higher rate of duty.—In 1920 our wine duties were doubled and all wines over 30 became chargeable at 12s. per dozen, instead of 6s. With a view to reducing costs some syndicates in Portugal then started shipping ports to this country at strengths below 30 per cent., thus saving 7s. a dozen to the buyers. But this saving was not necessarily passed to the consumer, and as, unfortunately, the law does not require a statement of the strength of port on the label, these low‐strength wines can be sold to the public at the same prices as the recognised high‐grade and high‐strength ports. At present, therefore, the public has no security as to strength, unless it insists on buying ports of the well‐known brands of reputable, houses, which carry a guarantee that they are of full strength, and these low‐strength wines sold as port are pouring into this country in an ever‐increasing volume, nearly three times as much having been shipped to Great Britain in the year 1924–5 as in 1921–22. If all these 2,228.842 gallons of low‐duty port imported into this country paid the higher rate of wine duty, the Revenue would have received £390,000 more from them than it actually did—in other words, the difference in the duty paid on these wines has resulted in a loss of that sum to the British revenue. Our Government could not have foreseen, when the treaty was made, how it would be evaded. From the revenue point of view, therefore, as well as that of the consumer, there is a clear case for regulating the strength at which wines may be described as “port.”—Port now plays so great a part in the wine dietary of this country that there should be an amendment of our law which would compel a statement on all port labels as to the strength of the wine—whether above or below the 30 per cent. duty line—in protection of the British consumer, who, in the meantime, can protect himself only on insisting on a disclosure as to whether his wine be full strength or otherwise. Indeed, some of the leading houses have found it necessary already to state on their labels and in their advertisements that their ports are of “full strength” as a safeguard to the buyer. Undoubtedly, some legal protection is required for the growing army of port consumers, in accordance with the precedent by which the law compels disclosure of strength in the case of whisky and other spirits below 35 degrees under proof. The public would then be protected against a form of the “confidence trick” and vendors of port could not complain if they were required to state the strength‐standard of their wine. Strong wines (over 30 degrees) from our Colonies were granted in the last Budget a preference of 8s. per dozen in duty, with a deliberate view to the development of Empire trade. Such is the magic of the word “port,” however, that so long as the wines are subject to the competition of low‐duty Portuguese wines at a cheap price to which the name “port” may be applied (Colonial wines are not permitted by law to use that name) the preference wines cannot be fully effective. If our Imperial wines containing over 30 per cent. of proof spirit cannot be described as port, it seems unfair that the name should be allowed to Portuguese wines containing less than 30 per cent. of proof spirit.