JAM ADULTERATION.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXV, Issue 10713, 24 April 1913, Page 7

JAM ADULTERATION.

The moist modem way of dodging the Pure Foods Acts is (says a London newspaper) very simple. If you want to sell some cheap article at a high price, suck as cheap apple jelly for costly black currant jam, all tint you need to do is to put on the labo! "Improved black currant jam." "Improved" is a far battel* word than "adulterated," yet the difference between til? two words has excused the sale of thousands of tons of imitations of jam and marmalade all- over the world. Mr Ernest Marriage, lecturing at the Royal Society of Arts on the "Adulteration of Jams." pressed home by laying bare some of the practices of the jam-making trade. The form of adulteration referred to by the le.tcurer as so genera] and so successful that it threatens to coirupt the whole -jam. trade, was the addition of he pulp or juice (which is the filtered pxilp), of cheap fruit to dearer jams. The mainstay of this adulteration is the apple, whilst lemons, gooseberries, and even red currants are used in some cases. Rhubarb, too, though not a fruit, plays a most useful part in "mixed fruit", jams, and perhaps provides "fruit juices" in other preserves. "How widespread this 'pr.-ietice is," he said, "a careful study of manufacturers' labels (added again, perhaps, by a magnifying glass) will show. Of course, it is not called adulteration, but the 'improvement' of a jam by 'the addition of other choice fruit,' where pulp is used, or 'by the addition of fruit juices,' if the adulterant has been filtered. Those adulterators who boldly take their chances of prosecution, or are confident in their ability to defy discovery, are ro doubt the minority. The majority are afraid of. the consequences, nn c ] seek to evade their legal liability. The Food and Drugs Act, misinterpreted by the carelessness or ignorance of magistrates, seems to offer a way of evasion by means of cunningly worded labels, and the. Act, whose very purpose was to put an end to adulteration, becomes the sheet anchor of the jam adulterator." The cost of currants needed,for producing a hun-dred-weight of jam is about 21s 3d. If aoples were.used their cost would lie <l's Bd.