First report of the Royal Commission appointed to inquire into arsenical poisoning from the consumption of beer and other articles of food or drink. Pt 1, Report.

  • Great Britain. Royal Commission on Arsenical Poisoning.
Date:
1901
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: First report of the Royal Commission appointed to inquire into arsenical poisoning from the consumption of beer and other articles of food or drink. Pt 1, Report. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    5 we have examined on this point, the provisions of the Public Health Act, 1875, and of the Public Health Acts Amendment Act, 1890, which enable officers of local authorities under certain conditions to obtain the condemna- tion and destruction of unsound articles of food, could not have been utilised for the above purposes. We think it right to state, however, that we have evidence that informal action by medical officers of health, and steps which were taken by those who found their business implicated, sufficed to obviate much of the difficulty and risk which might otherwise have arisen through lack of statutory power in these respects. (51) (c) Revenue Acts—These Acts have hitherto afforded no power of inspection or control over the manufacture of brewing materials, and (unlike the Sale of Food and Drugs Acts, and the Public Health Acts) they have no application to articles of food and drink which are not subject to duty. As regards breweries, it is not in practice accepted as part of the ordinary duty of officers of the Inland Revenue to acquire knowledge of the nature or origin of brewing materials to any further extent than may be necessary to safeguard the interests of the Revenue. Similarly, the function of the Government Laboratory, when dealing with samples of brewing materials sent to them by officers of Revenue for examination, has hitherto been rather the determination of their brewing value for purposes of preventing iraud on the Revenue, than of their quality or freedom from substances injurious to health. (32) By the Customs and Inland Revenue Act of 1888, the Commissioners of the Treasury have been empowered to prohibit by publication of notice in the London Gazette, the use in the manufacture or preparation for sale of any article subject to a duty of excise, of ‘any substance or liquor of a noxious or detrimental nature,” or which, ‘“ being a chemical or artificial extract or product, may affect prejudicially the interests of the Revenue.” By the same Act a person using any substance thus prohibited in the manufacture or preparation for sale of any article specified in the published notice is subject to penalty. We have learned that in practice this provision has come to be generally regarded as one essentially designed to protect the Revenue. It has not been made altogether clear that the provision would cover the © . ° . be e . e . ‘Za prohibition of arsenicated brewing materials. The only article which has been scheduled at the instance of the Board of Inland Revenue for exclusion from breweries has been saccharin, which has been so treated for Revenue ’ reasons. (33) On consideration of all the circumstances connected with the recent epidemic, we think that some improvement in administrative measures is called for. It is evident that amendments have to be considered, not only with reference to the question of arsenic in beer, but also in relation to the broader question of the machinery available to public health authorities to obviate risk of arsenic or other poisonous substance reaching articles of food and drink in general. Upon this important general question we consider it essential to await further evidence before making final recommendations. But meanwhile, seeing that the epidemic of 1900 has been caused solely by beer, and that there exists in the case of breweries (although for another purpose) a system of close inspection by a Government Department—the Board of Inland Revenue—we think that as a provisional measure the machinery under this system might effectively be turned to account to check the introduction of arsenic into beer by way of its ingredients. (84) To this end we recommend that the Board of Inland Revenue should possess and should exercise powers to specify in detail individual ingredients. of beer which are liable from their origin or mode of preparation to be contaminated by arsenic, to prescribe for every such ingredient, and for the different materialsused in their preparation, an adequate test which should ensure their freedom from arsenic, and to prohibit, under penalty, the use in a brewery of any material which infringes the prescribed test.