Adulterated Tea.

Waimate Daily Advertiser, Volume III, Issue 119, 24 October 1901, Page 1

Adulterated Tea.

The Melbourne Leader of August 10th prints the following aa the. result of an Inspection made by the Queensland Health Officer in (he stores and hotels of Brisbane “ Worst of all was the tea. Thirty chests were compounded of tea-dust and sand rolled with starch into pellets, and coloured by mixing magnetic oxide of iron. {How would you like to drink this blend 1) That lea was ordered to be destroyed or exported. It was exported, but the tea-drinking comma* nity will want to know where to, and who is now drinking this 1 blend 1 of diluted sand, starch, and magnetic oxide.”

Now, these are official facts, und the thirty chests referred to might easily have been shipped to New Zealand, foe there is no Government inspection dl tea shipments here such as there 18 in Melbourne.

The Sydney Mail, writing on the sublet, say*t—“Oar attention had been directed to the fact that very possibly the thirty chests of tea 4 ordered to be destroyed of immediately etpolled* from Brisbane have come on to Sydney* As the right of exportation was availed of, and Sydney is the nearest port, there are no means of knowing Whether this has been the case or not.” Much tea i* bonght In Sydney by the New Zealand blenders, and several Sydney, merchants pash their trade in New Zealand, and it is just possible that the stuff may come on to Near Zealand, for low prices in * 4 food products ” mean, as a rale, adulteration of some kind. Now, a sure and certain way of avoiding any chance of consuming such food is to purchase tea packed and sealed in Oeylon at the tea factories, where the leaves are dried and packed by machinery for use. Here on tha estates tea is so plentiful that it would not pay to use adulterants, and as the well-known Hondai banka brands are thus packed and sealed, there la no tampering with the contents which are placed in the consumers’ hands just af they left the Buropean-controlled fao» tory.