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Charts the origins of Employee Assistance Programmes (EAPs) in New Zealand and describes the development of the broadbrush EAP model that led to EAPs as they are known today. Highlights the main features of EAP Services New Zealand, a not‐for‐profit charitable foundation for which the authors work. Concludes with a comparison between New Zealand and Australian EAP services.

Responding to unprecedented demands for its high capacity medium range series of airliners, a leading world aircraft manufacturer recently identified requirements for updating techniques employed in the production of certain major airframe components. To achieve corresponding reductions in inspection time on these components, LK Limited was asked to produce a co‐ordinate measuring machine that would be the largest of its type in the world.

Reports on the 360‐degree appraisal, introduced at British Aerospace′s Military Aircraft Division, to link the division′s organizational development strategy with its management development programme. Focuses on the improved teamwork, enhanced personnel management skills and task orientation achieved through personal development plans, feedback and advanced multimedia open learning.

In the continuation of the work previously described, experiments were conducted, according to the general plan already described, to determine the effects of benzoic acid and benzoates upon health and digestion. This investigation is of special importance because of the opinion held by many manufacturers, food officials, and consumers that benzoic acid and benzoates are probably the least harmful of the preservative substances employed. It is believed that for this reason there has been a very large increase in the use of these preservatives in the United States in the last few years, with a corresponding decrease in the amount of other preservative substances employed. It has also been claimed that there can be no reasonable objection to the use of benzoic acid by reason of its natural occurrence in many food products, either in traces or in considerable quantities. Among the products cited the cranberry occupies the most prominent position because of the notable amount of benzoic acid it contains. These considerations, however, had no determining influence on the choice of this substance for the experimental work, inasmuch as it was included in the original scheme which was prepared before the experimental work on preservatives previously reported was begun.

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.

.Counter Competition. SUPERMARKETS and private shopkeepers battle for business in every High Street. In all shopping centres the private trader competes for the customer's cash with chain and departmental stores. He finds life increasingly difficult in face of rising overheads and shrinking profit margins.

Although it was ordained in the Beginning, we are told, that mankind should have dominion over the fish of the sea, it is only within comparatively recent times that the ocean has provided man with that very substantial proportion of his food supply now deriving from this source. More and still greater weights of fish are taken from the sea each year, but the food requirements of a hungry world are increasing too, at a rate that is a persistent source of alarm to many, so that any design or device that may decrease wastage and thus expand the quantities of food available, must be given careful thought and consideration. The case for utilising aureomycin or some other antibiotic to reduce fish spoilage has a not unreasonable aspect, but at this year's conference of the Public Health Inspectors' Association, Mr. John D. Syme, who is Chief Port Health Inspector at Grimsby, and should therefore know something about the fishing industry, came out fairly strongly against the idea; he feared it might cause a lowering of standards of hygiene on fishing vessels, and although the duration of voyages could be lengthened, he doubted whether in the long run the condition of the fish on landing would show any improvement. He regarded the step proposed as retrograde and contrary to the generally accepted trend of recent years toward the production of purer food and the elimination of preservatives as far as possible.

According to a report issued by the Director of the Chemical Laboratory of the Department of Police in Berlin which has reached the Journal of the American Medical Association, some interesting exhibitions of German “culture” in the matter of food frauds have been afforded during the war. We do not know the origin or the justification (if any) of the ancient proverb that there is “honour among thieves.” Evidently, however, even this form of “honour,” if it exists, does not exist among the Huns, since the criminal in the German lines is hocussed by the huckster‐criminal in the German fake‐shop. One of the articles supplied to stimulate the Hun in the doing of those deeds of Hunnish valour peculiar to himself is known as “solid alcohol,” advertised as a substitute for familiar alcoholic beverages, and consisting of cubes of gelatin to which brandy and sugar are supposed to have been added before the mixture has solidified. The directions are to pour hot water on these cubes, whereupon one obtains a sweetish fluid, weak in alcohol, and possessing the objectionable flavour of glue. The longer the cubes are kept the greater is the tendency of the alcohol originally present to disappear by evaporation, so that the supposedly invigorating “solid brandy,” never at any time a representative product, becomes weaker and weaker in alcoholic strength. In some cases the cubes have been replaced by collapsible tubes of semi‐gelatinous mixtures containing some brandy and advertised for use in the same way with hot water. The price of two‐ounce tubes varies from 25 to 35 cents. The alcohol content has gradually been reduced by the manufacturers, and one firm went so far as to introduce brandy substitutes and substances of a “peppery” nature to simulate the “warmth” of a dose of brandy. Painful lesions about the mouth have been reported by Germans on the march who were unable to wash out the disgusting mixture that was sent to them by their friends. Other “substitutes” for alcoholic beverages were found to consist of cubes of sugar coloured with coal‐tar dyes mixed with tartaric acid. Grosslv adulterated coffee and cocoa have likewise been supplied in tablet form. One popular brand was sold at the rate of 12 marks per pound. Coffee has been often replaced by chicory mixed with sugar. 500,000 kilograms of cocoa husks found their way into the market in Hamburg alone. Tablets alleged to be made of dried milk, but being nothing of the kind, have been sent in enormous quantities.

THE sudden death, at a comparatively early age, of Mr. Franklin Trengrouse Barrett, of the Fulham Public Libraries, removes from the ranks of librarians, one of the most promising, highly‐trained, and best‐loved of those younger men whose work is making itself so strongly felt in this country. His death came as a severe shock to most of his friends, and particularly to his father, Mr. Francis T. Barrett, the universally‐esteemed City Librarian of Glasgow, who was quite unprepared for such a sudden and bitter bereavement. To him, as to Mrs. Franklin Barrett, a lady well‐known and much respected by London librarians, I am sure the deepest sympathy of all librarians and other colleagues will go forth. The sad event has already produced a great many messages of sympathy from many kind friends, and for these, and other efforts of consolation and comfort, the family are deeply grateful.

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.