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Describes a genuinely new food ingredient which has been on the market for eight years. Considers some of the scientific studies which demonstrate that Quorn can be very valuable for helping consumers to adjust to the dietary recommendations.

Michale Sadler PhD reports form the conference, Biotechnology in the Food Industry – New Applications and Noval Approaches

Prosecutions under Criminal Law, associated in the minds of most people with “criminal offences” of a serious nature—“crime” in the traditional sense—and undertaken by the police authorities, constitute a very large and rather untidy body of public law. It includes a large and constantly growing number of offences in respect of which prosecutions are undertaken by various corporate bodies who, as in the case of local authorities, have a duty albeit with a power of discretion, to prosecute. There would appear to be little in common between such offences, as smoking in the presence of open food or failing to provide soap, nail‐brushes, etc, for food handlers, and the villainy and violence of the criminal, but their misdeeds are all criminal offences and subject to the same law. Other countries, such as France, have definite Criminal Codes and these offences against statutes and statutory instruments which in English Law are dealt with in the broad field of Criminal Law, are subject to special administrative procedure. It has obvious advantages. Although in England and Wales, prosecutions are undertaken by police authorities, local authorities, public corporations, even professional bodies and private individuals, with a few statutory exceptions for which the Attorney‐General's fiat or consent of the Director of Public Prosecutions is necessary, may instigate a prosecution against anyone if he can provide prima facie evidence to support it. In Scotland, prosecutions are instituted at the instigation of the various authorities by an officer, the Procurator‐Fiscal. Many advocate such a system for England and Wales, despite the enormous difference in the volume of litigation. Supervision of prosecutions on a much smaller scale is by the Director of Public Prosecutions, an office created in 1879, with power to institute and carry on criminal proceedings—this is the less significant of his duties, the number of such prosecutions usually being only several thousands per year—the most important being to advise and assist chief officers of police, clerks to the magistrates and any others concerned with criminal proceedings Regulations govern the cases in which DPP may act, mainly cases of public interest. The enormous growth of summary jurisdiction over the years, especially that arising from so‐called secondary legislation, is largely outside his sphere.

Normal calcium metabolism may be considered under six main headings, each closely related to, and dependent on one another. These divisions are: (1) The skeleton; (2) The level of calcium in the blood; (3) The intake of calcium; (4) The output of calcium; (5) The factors which regulate the absorption of calcium from gut; (6) Certain endocrine glands which have a controlling influence on the output of calcium in the urine.

In a recent reference to changes brought about by the local government reorganisation of 1974, we criticised some of the names given to the new areas. Some of these name changes have made difficulties for those who follow from afar the doings of local authorities, as well as raising the ire of local people. Local names, however, are not the only casualty. The creation of new and larger governmental organisations rarely, if ever, results in economy and as anticipated, it was not long before the new local authorities were being directed to embrace financial stringency and all that it incurs. One such other casualty has been the loss of so many of the annual reports of local authority departments, very few now arriving at BFJ offices. In every case, the reason has been the same—severe restrictions on spending. Not that this was not necessary in many fields, but in respect of annual reports, we are convinced it was false economy. For so many of the reports, it was our pleasure to review them in the pages of BFJ. A prominent Labour politician was once heard to refer to them as “hard and dry reports for hard and dry officials”. It all depends probably on what you are looking for in them. Statistics there must be but most enforcement officers and public analysts, endeavour to keep these to the minimum, the general impression being that these are “dry”. If you are looking for trends, for comparison of the year under review with preceding years and then for comparing the results reported in one part of the country with another, where the population, eating habits, consumer reactions may be different, the tables of statistics are highly important.

Pre‐employment medical examinations with appropriate testing are required in many industries—a basic tenet of Occupational Medicine—and it has long been a recommendation of many in community medicine and environmental health for those food handlers whose close contact with open food, aspects of its preparation, processing, sale, exposure for sale, make their personal health important and in prevention of diseases and may constitute a health hazard to food consumers. Epidemiological studies have revealed too many instances of a human source of disease, especially in milk and water, for this to be denied or under‐estimated. Food poisioning outbreaks caused by a carrier, of chronic or limited duration, enable those investigating such outbreaks to see there could be advantages in medical screening of certain employees especially in certain areas of food trades. The main problem is to decide the extent of the discipline and who should be subject to it. The fact that by far the majority of the examinations and tests will prove negative should not be seen as removing the need for the service. After all, there are a number of similar circumstances in public health. Meat inspection, for example, in which a 100% inspection of all food animals slaughtered for human food is now fully established, it is not suggested that inspections should in any way be reduced despite the fact that a number of the diseases, eg., tuberculosis, no longer occurs as it once did, which was the prime cause of meat inspection being brought into being. Other areas where routine medical examinations reveal satisfactory health with only a few isolated cases requiring attention, is the school medical service. Here, the “de‐bunkers” have had some success, but if children are not regularly examined at vulnerable age levels and especially in between where the occasion demands, there is no question that much will be missed and ill‐health progress to a chronic state.

If it is a fraud to dye an unripe orange to make it look ripe, why should it be permissible to dye winter butter to make it look like summer butter?”, he says. Or one might add, to dye a biscuit brown to imply the presence of chocolate or to colour a cake yellow to simulate the addition of eggs? Our third heading is, What? What colouring matters should be allowed, and upon what conditions? Great Britain is the only leading country which has not a legal schedule of permitted colours. In this country any colouring agent may be added to food, except compounds of antimony, arsenic, cadmium, chromium, copper, mercury, lead and zinc. Gamboge, picric acid, victoria yellow, manchester yellow, aurantia and aurine are also prohibited. The addition, however, of any other colouring agent which is injurious to health would be an offence under the Food and Drugs Act. Other countries, including the United States of America, France, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Italy, Spain, Sweden and Denmark have drawn up lists of permissible colours. And so the question arises—is it preferable to draw up a list of permissible colours or one of prohibited colours? It is obvious that if only certain colours are prohibited the remainder may be legally employed so long as they are not injurious to health. Thus a colouring agent may be used for a considerable time before it is proved to be injurious, whereas, if only‐certain colouring agents which have been previously proved to be non‐injurious were permitted, this risk of possible danger to health would be avoided. There is no doubt that in many cases proof of injury to the health of the human being is difficult to obtain. Much of the work that has been carried out to establish whether a particular dye is harmless or not has involved the use of dogs as test subjects. This does not appear to be a very satisfactory method of testing, for obviously dogs may react very differently from human beings towards chemicals. A dog's digestive powers are stronger than those of humans. No one would think of suggesting that bones are suitable food for humans just because dogs love them! Matta found that the capacity to depress the human digestion is possessed not only by poisonous dyes but also by dyes which he had proved to be non‐poisonous to animals. In bacteriology the addition of very small amounts of certain dyes to the culture medium will retard the growth of particular organisms and therefore it would seem possible that some dyes might adversely affect the action of enzymes in the body. So it would seem of importance that, if possible, all colouring matters, before being permitted to be used in food, should be proved by a competent authority to be harmless to human beings. If the effects of colouring matters upon the human digestive processes cannot be easily carried out in the body then it might be possible to perform such tests in vitro, using artificial gastric juice. It may be argued that the proportion of colouring matter added to food, ranging from about 1 part in 2,000 to about 1 part in 300,000, is so small that any particular colouring agent would need to be a deadly poison before any appreciable injurious effect upon health would occur. This argument does not, however, take into account the possible injurious effects which may be caused by the frequent ingestion of colouring matters which may have but mild toxic properties. It is known, for instance, that many synthetic colours have marked antiseptic properties even in highly diluted solutions, and therefore they may adversely affect the digestive processes. In any case, surely it would be wiser to eliminate all risks by requiring that official physiological tests should be carried out upon colouring matters before they are permitted to be used in food. One has to safeguard not only the healthy person but also the very young, the old and those who are of a delicate constitution. A harmless colour has been defined in Canada as one “which will not retard digestion nor have special physiological effects when consumed in quantities corresponding to 2 grains per day per adult.” The Departmental Committee in its report on “The use of preservatives and colouring matters in food,” published in 1924, stated that “It appears to us that definite evidence from direct experiments should be obtained as to the harmlessness of a dye before its use should be permitted in food. We have therefore come to the conclusion that a list of permitted colours should be prepared and that no colours other than those in such a list should be allowed to be used in the preparation of food. The list should, in our opinion, be prepared by the Minister of Health and issued by him, provision being made for the consideration of claims advanced by traders for the recognition and approval of additional colours on satisfactory evidence of harmlessness. We do not think that action such as this should seriously embarrass manufacturing interests, or is a course on which it is unreasonable, in view of the importance of the subject, to insist.” Yet, in spite of these recommendations of the Committee, no list of permitted colours was passed into law, and one wonders why. One argument against the drawing up of a list of prohibited colours is that even if a non‐prohibited colour is proved to the satisfaction of a given Court to be injurious to health that decision is not binding on other Courts and so there may be a lack of uniformity. A certain colour may be permitted in one town and prohibited in the next, which fact might add to the difficulties of the large scale manufacturer whose products are sold over a wide area. The leading manufacturers of dyes for use in food no doubt exercise great care in their preparation and such products are normally free from objectionable impurities, but it is possible that other dyestuff manufacturers are not so particular concerning the purity of their products. For instance, about 1938 a firm was fined for selling “Damson Blue” containing 540 parts of lead per million. Therefore it would seem necessary that some official control over the dyes that are sold for use in food should be introduced. The manufacture of some dyes involves complicated processes, and it is stated that in the production of one particular colour over 100 different chemicals are used and thirty different reactions, occupying several weeks, must be carried out before the finished colour is produced.

The first Report of the Radiobiological Laboratory of the Agricultural Research Council (reviewed in the August issue of the B.F.J.) reveals something of the comprehensive monitoring system for radioactive fission products in the human diet, animal products, pasturage and crops, and the soil. The Report contained the results of a survey of Strontium 90 in the human diet in this country. The survey is continuing into radioactive pollution of food. The service will be available for “accidents” at the gradually increasing number of atomic plants and doubtless it will be extended to cover imported foods, that is at the port of entry, since these may come from countries with higher levels from fall‐outs than in the U.K. Such a service is a public health necessity in any country even though present levels are generally insignificant in relation to the Medical Research Council's recommendations for maximum allowable concentrations. These levels, at which the M.R.C. say action would be required, were doubtless fixed with wide safety margins before definite danger levels would be approached and as maximum allowable concentrations are unlikely to be reached in the peace‐time uses of nuclear energy, including present rates of testing nuclear weapons, except in areas adjacent to possible “accidents” at nuclear plants, perhaps our fears of danger to health from radiation are exaggerated. Possible war‐time levels are another matter; these are unpredictable; unthinkable. There are fairly large areas in different parts of the world, extremely rich in radio‐active materials; where the indigenous population has, as long as it has been settled there, received many times the dose to which the population of the remainder of the earth have so far been exposed. These people in a few areas have been studied; they appear to suffer no ill effects and are as healthy and fertile as those who do not live on radio‐active earth.

More than half a century ago, glucose was “making the headlines” in connection with its use in brewing; it was conferring on beers derived from it properties not anticipated by the brewers and certainly not appreciated by the unfortunate consumers. Arsenic present in the sulphuric acid used in the hydrolysis of starch being converted into glucose passed through into the final product and there was a very unpleasant epidemic of arsenical poisoning, particularly in the Manchester area. There were many repercussions, lasting right up to the present time. One of our early recollections was of long rows of Gutzeit bottles emitting the rather unpleasant odour produced by the action of hydrochloric acid and granulated zinc on beers and ales, although, if memory can be relied upon, we were never successful in finding any significant amounts of arsenic.

The case, briefly reported in the last issue of BFJ, an appeal to a Milk and Dairies Tribunal arising out of a local authority's refusal to grant a licence to a milk distributor because he failed to comply with a requirement that he should provide protective curtains to his milk floats, was a rare and in many ways, an interesting event. The Tribunal in this case was set up under reg. 16(2) (f), Milk (Special Designation) Regulations, 1963, constituted in accordance with Part I, clause 2 (2), Schedule 4 of the Regulations. Part II outlines procedure for such tribunals. The Tribunal is similar to that authorized by S.30, Food and Drugs Act, 1955, which deals with the registration of dairymen, dairy farms and farmers, and the Milk and Dairies (General) Regulations, 1959. Part II, Schedule 2 of the Act provided for reference to a tribunal of appeals against refusal or cancellation of registration by the Ministry, but of producers only. A local authority's power to refuse to register or cancellation contained in Part I, Schedule 2 provided for no such reference and related to instances where “public health is or is likely to be endangered by any act or default” of such a person, who was given the right of appeal against refusal to register, etc., to a magistrates' court. No such limitation exists in respect of the revoking, suspending, refusal to renew a licence under the Milk (Special Designation) Regulations, 1963; an appeal against same lies to the Minister, who must refer the matter to a tribunal, if the person so requests. This occurred in the case under discussion.