become a moving power in the development of a high degree of intelligence and more earnest effort in the application and practice of real business methods in agriculture. The outgrowth of the Institutes and Movable Schools of Agriculture is a demand, first, for an additional appropriation for the Schools and Institutes of not less than $10,000; and, further in order to enforce the work, an appropriation should be made for the employment of a limited number of practical and scientific counsellors whose business it would be to visit farms of the State and there advise and counsel with the farmers along their respective lines of work, thereby explaining, in a personal manner, many things that would vastly help in the upbuilding of the great work throughout the State.

With full assurance that when these requests are made to the coming Legislature, this greatest of occupations will receive such recognition as their needs demand, I am, Very respectfully,

A. L. MARTIN, Director of Institutes.

REPORT OF THE DAIRY AND FOOD
COMMISSIONER

Harrisburg, Pa., December 31, 1911.

Hon. N. B. Critchfield, Secretary of Agriculture:

Dear Sir: I have the honor to submit herewith a report of the Dairy and Food Bureau of the Department of Agriculture, for the year ending December 31, 1911. It covers the operations for the year and contains some details that may be useful for public information.

INTRODUCTORY REMARKS

The work of this Bureau of the Department of Agriculture is very precisely determined by the language of the several State food acts. The general body of food statutes remained, with two exceptions presently to be mentioned, the same as in preceding years; hence, the general character of the work in the past year has been like that of the years immediately preceding. Since the general nature of this work has been quite fully discussed in preceding reports, it probably requires no discussion of its principles at this time.

There have, however, been added to the statutes, the enforcement of which the Legislature has committed to the care of the Dairy and Food Bureau, two new and important laws, which call for especial consideration in this connection.

THE SAUSAGE ACT

The first of these two acts is what is generally known as the sausage act, approved on the 6th day of April, A. D. 1911. This act defines sausage, prohibits the selling, the offering and exposing for sale and the possessing with intent to sell, of sausage that is adulterated, under the definitions of the act, and then in a third section declares that the following conditions shall be regarded as adulterations:

First. The addition of water in excessive amounts, beyond the limit specifically indicated by the law.

Second. The presence of any cereal or vegetable flour.

Third. The presence of coal tar dyes, certain chemical preservatives and other substances injurious or deleterious to health.

Fourth. The presence of diseased, contaminated, filthy or decomposed substance, products from a diseased animal, or one dying otherwise than by slaughter, or from substances so stored, transported, or handled as to render them unfit for use in foods.

Prior to the passage of this act, it had been known for some time that serious abuses existed, widespread, in the sausage trade. It is

true, that owing to the National Meat Inspection Act, the raw materials used for the production of this very generally used food product were, in all large establishments, brought under the careful examination of government experts, and that, as a result of the National inspection, the sanitary character of the meats used had been quite fully insured, as respects the sausage produced in establishments of such extent as to come within the scope of the National Act. Furthermore, the enactment and enforcement of the Pennsylvania law, by which the slaughter of animals for use as food is placed under the supervision of the State Veterinarian, have materially increased the safety of the public with respect to the products coming from the smaller local butchering establishments. It is believed, therefore, that the sanitary risks had been quite materially reduced, if not wholly removed, as the result of the operation of the national and state laws just mentioned.

With respect to the use of artificial coloring, by whose employment to dye the casing of sausage, its appearance is so changed as to deceive the purchaser concerning its quality, and to lead him to accept as a prime article sausage made from inferior meats, prosecutions brought under the general food law of the State had very largely diminished this undesirable practice. The same statement applies also to the use of boric acid and other preservatives, formerly much used by some sausage manufacturers.

The incorporation into the present sausage act, of these sanitary provisions, and also of those relative to the use of coal tar dyes and of chemical preservatives in sausage, was made necessary, however, because of the legal principle of giving to recently enacted laws priority of application over laws earlier enacted upon the same subject. The purpose of the reenactment of the special provisions here under consideration, was to make sure that the general principle adopted by the Legislature in enacting the Pure Food Law of May 13, 1909, should also apply in the case of sausage.

The most important new features appearing in the present sausage act, are those prohibiting the addition of excessive amounts of water, and of cereal or vegetable flour. For the information of the consumer, I desire to state, in this connection, the reasons for urging the inclusion of these prohibitions in the present sausage act, which, in this respect, differs not at all in principle from the general food act, but only in making specific a prohibition already implied in the general food law, to the end that the manufacturers, the consumers and the courts might more clearly understand and more efficiently enforce these principles, as they affect sausage.

The general definition of sausage, incorporated in the act, is essentially that adopted by the Association of Official Agricultural Chemists and the Association of National and State Food and Dairy Departments, upon the recommendation of their joint committee on food standards, who had devoted several years to the study of the subject, and had not only familiarized themselves with the literature pertaining to it, but had visited packing establishments and conducted extensive correspondence with, and granted hearings to, the sausage manufacturing trade. It is recognized that under the name "sausage,' and more particularly under its German equivalent "Wurst," a great

variety of materials has been included, and that in certain comparatively rare products, such, for example, as bread sausage (brodwurst), bread crumbs were essential ingredients. It was clear, however, that the addition of such materials to the general body of products recog nized under the name "sausage," was abnormal, and generally regarded, even in Germany, the home of sausage, as an abuse. The objection to the introduction of starchy substances, such as cereals and vegetable flour, is not, of course, owing to objections to them as unfit for food, or as absolutely lacking in food value, but because they replace and, especially with the water they hold, make possible the omission of very considerable quantities of the normal sausage substance, meat. The result is that the consumer, who buys the sausage, is deceived. He supposes that he is securing for his use, a purely meat product, except for the seasoning used in the sausage mixture, when, as a matter of fact, he is made to pay meat price for starchy substances, costing at wholesale not more than three cents per pound, and for much larger quantities of water, costing the manufacturer practically nothing. This condition is manifestly undesirable.

In fairness to the manufacturer, his arguments for the use of these materials ought here to be stated. He claims, in the first place, that, during the operation of chopping the meat and seasoning it, to fit it for making high quality sausage, it is necessarily exposed, in a finely divided condition, to the air, and thereby loses a considerable portion of its normal water content, and that, consequently, it becomes too dry to reduce to a mass of such consistence that it can not readily be stuffed, by the customary processes, into the delicate casings and that. it is necessary, therefore, to add water sufficient to bring the sausage mass to a consistence fitting it for stuffing. The Legislature, in passing the sausage act, recognized that there was a measure of fairness in this claim of the manufacturer, and, therefore, prohibited the addition of water only in excess of those quantities needed to bring the meats back to the moisture conditions normal to fresh meats of the kind used, believing that no further tolerance of added water is necessary to the manufacturer who prepares a sausage meat of the usual tissues, used in common proportions, one to the other.

It may be stated at this point that, in fixing this limit of tolerance for added water, the Legislature was not making a provision that is incapable of reasonable enforcement, since it is possible to determine, by chemical means, the fact that water is or is not present in excess of the amount normal to fresh meats. Such meats vary very much in moisture, it is true, according as they are derived from fat or lean animals, but the moisture supply in the meat tissue bears a quite constant relation to the nitrogenous substances of the meat, so that by determining both the amount of moisture present in the sausage, and also the quantity of nitrogen, it is practicable to discover wide departures from the normal relation between these two substances.

The manufacturer has urged that the use of starchy ingredients in sausage has been quite general in this country, and that the length of time during which it has been thus used, as well as the large proportion of sausage makers who have followed this practice, should be regarded as having established for the sausage manufacturer a right to such practice. There is, however, no evidence to show that the consumer has been, at all generally, aware that under the name 6-6-1911

"sausage" he has been buying cereals, or vegetable flour, together with the very considerable proportions of water they will hold, when in the cooked state, instead of the meat they replace, and at the prices of such meat. For this reason, the right to use such materials, at least without a declaration of their presence, is not to be admitted.

The manufacturer further claims that the use of such starchy material in sausage is necessary as a "binder," that is, as a substance loosely cementing the meat particles into a common mass and holding them together, not only during the stuffing process, but also during the later storage, transportation, and even the cooking. It is true that certain sausage ingredients, especially lean meats, used without the presence of other usually included meat parts, do not unite to form a coherent mass, particularly when the meats are not properly seasoned, and that, therefore, sausages prepared from these materials alone lack certain of the desirable qualities of the best made sausages, and that, in such cases, the presence of cooked starch, holding large amounts of water, does add somewhat to the appearance, and other physical characters, of the sausage, but it is also true that cereals are not used at all generally, where more expensive, good quality pork is included as part of the sausage mass, and that starch serves to give to the inferior sausage, similarity in appearance, and something of similarity during the cooking, to the more expensive, high quality product.

Under the provisions of the National Meat Inspection Act, all sausages to which cereal, potato flour, or other vegetable flour, has been added, are required to declare such addition upon the labels under which they are sold. These labeling requirements are quite readily carried out, so long as the product is held in the original, wholesale package, but are less satisfactorily applicable to the conditions of the retail trade, in the course of which the product is very commonly removed from the container, so that the buyer is not informed, as it was intended he should be, concerning the real nature of the product he is buying. There was second reason for the course taken by the Pennsylvania Legislature, in framing the present sausage act: Dry starch, when cooked in the presence of water, takes up and holds in the thick paste thereby formed, a number of times its own weight of water. The declaration, therefore, of the presence of the starch alone, fails to inform the buyer of the much more important added water.

The statement of the results of the examination of sausages retailed in Pennsylvania during 1911, which will be made in a later paragraph, must, I believe, convince the public of the need for this legislation.

THE MILK AND CREAM ACT

On June 8, 1911, the Governor approved a new act relating to milk and cream, repealing all earlier acts, or parts of acts, inconsistent with the provisions of the new law, but specifically retaining in force the act of June 10, 1897, prohibiting the adulteration or coloring of milk and cream by the addition of so-called preservatives or coloring matter, and the act of April 19, 1897, amending the first section of the act just mentioned. The general milk acts thus repealed, especially the act of 1909, were similar, in their general intent, to the new act, especially as they related to milk, for both acts prohibited the watering and skimming of milk, although not prohibiting the