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The purpose of this study is to investigate whether a country’s ownership concentration affects the financial reporting quality in a cross-country setting.

This paper uses six accounting and auditing indicators to construct a comprehensive index to measure the country-level financial reporting quality.

The authors find a non-linear nature of the relationship between the national financial reporting quality and national ownership structure. Specifically, the relation is negative in a relatively spread ownership structure with no controlling shareholders, implying the entrenchment effects dominate. When ownership is highly concentrated, particularly with controlling shareholders whose interest is aligned with that of the firm, the relation turns to positive and alignment effects dominate.

The study is an important extension of prior research examining the financial reporting quality effect of ownership concentration. It enhances the understanding of the role of ownership concentration in determining a country’s financial reporting quality and has potential important policy implications for countries’ reformers and regulators who are concerned with the transparency of financial reporting and the quality of corporate governance.

The Pure Food and Health Society of Great Britain held a conference at the Inns of Court Hotel, Holborn, on May 27. Mr. H. E. MORGAN presided, supported by LORD CAMOYS and Mr. S. F. EDGE. The principal objects of the conference were to discuss (1) the best methods of preventing food frauds and substitutions that are injurious to consumer and honest manufacturer alike; (2) some means of educating the public, preferably by advertisement, so that they can discriminate genuine and good from inferior, worthless, and fraudulent articles.

Fatigue, occurring in an average healthy individual, under ordinary conditions of life, and while foodstuffs of a very usual character are being ingested, is an indication of an inability on the part of the organism to meet, with sufficient rapidity, the demands of the body created by wear and tear. It is an association of defective oxidation and the undue accumulation of waste products in the tissues and blood, and is in a very large percentage of cases caused solely by a deficiency in the average dietary of to‐day of one or more of those mineral elements which are essential to life. That mineral substances are indispensable to life has been fully demonstrated, for it has been shown that animals fed upon proteins, carbohydrates, and fats, which have been rendered as ash‐free as possible, perish even more rapidly than if they are deprived of food altogether.

In reporting to the Board early in 1906 on inquiries as to meat inspection in London; Dr. Buchanan drew attention to the need for a better understanding, in the interests of the British consumer, of the conditions under which meat and meat foods are prepared abroad for exportation to the United Kingdom, of the various systems of inspection or control adopted abroad in the case of such meats, and of the significance to be attached to the presence or absence of official inspection labels or marks on imported carcass meat and other meat foods.

In discussing the subject of bread, or indeed any subject, one is of course confronted by the initial difficulty of definition. Nothing is harder than to define any concrete thing, no matter how common and well‐known it may be. This is not surprising when we remember that no one has ever succeeded in defining a definition. Perhaps the best attempt to do so is Pascal's, in the “Port Royal Logic,” and it is easy to drive a coach and six through the rules which he lays down for definitions to conform to. The only things that can be strictly defined are mathematical abstractions, such as a circle, which are formed on natural objects by pruning away their multitudinous properties till only two or three which can be expressed by a short and indisputable definition are left.

In previous articles the chemical composition of the infant's food has been discussed from a theoretical standpoint. Before dealing with the actual preparations at present on the market, it is necessary to refer briefly to certain other practical considerations which, apart from chemical composition and from any question of digestibility, greatly influence the value of these products, and which may be discussed under the following headings:—(1) Bulk or compactness, (2) Keeping power, (3) Ease and rapidity of preparation for use, (4) Cost.

35. Milk which does not come up to requirements is returned to the farmers, and this rule appears to be more stringently enforced by co‐operative societies than by private firms, the control over the farmer being greater in the case of the former than the latter. In most cases, morning milk and the milk of the previous evening arrive in the early morning at the creamery. These milks are not mixed at the farm but arrive in separate cans, the morning milk being warm and the evening milk cold on arrival. It may here be noted that milking is done at twelve‐hour intervals (5 a.m. and 5 p.m.) so that the composition of morning and evening milk shows very little variation. Where a creamery condenses full cream milk, morning milk is the milk preferred, and when possible this is the milk which is condensed.

We publish this month a report of a case which was recently heard by the Stipendiary at Middlesbrough, in which a Co‐operative Society was summoned for being in possession of meat which was condemned as tuberculous and as unfit for human food. In view of the magisterial decision, it is of interest to review the facts of the case. It appears that Inspector WATSON visited the defendant society's slaughter‐house, and that he saw there several carcases hanging up and an employee dressing a carcase which was obviously tuberculous. In reply to Inspector WATSON'S demand, the internal organs of the animal were produced and were found to be covered with tuberculous nodules. Dr. DINGLE, the Medical Officer of Health, accompanied by Mr. G. ANDERSON, the Chief Sanitary Inspector, subsequently visited the slaughter‐house and agreed that the carcase was undoubtedly tuberculous and quite unfit for human food. Accordingly they seized the carcase which was subsequently condemned by order of the magistrate. When the defendant society was summoned before the Court, the counsel for the prosecution pointed out that when Inspector ANDERSON visited the slaughter‐house he asked the slaughterer why he had continued dressing the carcase when it was obvious to anyone that the meat was tuberculous. The condition of the carcase was not disputed by the defendants, but it was contended that the slaughter‐house was under the control of the manager and that no carcase would be removed until it had been inspected by him. In view of this contention for the defence, the magistrate held that it had not been proved that the meat was intended for human food, despite the fact that the diseased internal organs had been removed, and that the carcase had been dressed as if it were intended for use as food. If the decision in all such cases rested upon evidence of a similar nature, it is obvious that the Public Health Acts would become inefficient and useless, inasmuch as it would only be necessary for a defendant to state that any diseased meat found in his slaughter‐house was awaiting the inspection of the manager, and then the law could not interfere. Such a condition of things would obviously be unsatisfactory. The Stipendiary observed that the prosecution was justified, and commended the ability with which the Health Department carried on its work.

Town Clerk's Office, Town Hall, Bethnal Green, E. 18th November, 1916. To the Chairman and Members of the Public Health Committee. Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen, At a recent meeting of the Public Health Committee, the Chief Sanitary Inspector reported upon legal proceedings which had been unsuccessful owing to the case of “Hunt v. Richardson” decided by a King's Bench Divisional Court of five Judges on the 2nd June, 1916, and I then reported upon the legal aspect of the case.