From caveat emptor to caveat venditor, 2005.pdf

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From caveat emptor to caveat venditor: debates about milk falsification in France andBritain, 1850-1925

Peter Atkins and Alessandro Stanziani

P.J. Atkins,Department of Geography,University of Durham,Durham DH1 3LE,United Kingdom

[email protected]

A. Stanziani,IDHE-Cachan, CNRS,61 Avenue du Président Wilson,94235 Cachan,[email protected]

Note: this paper is unpublished. The copyright remains with the authors

Peter Atkins and Alessandro Stanziani 2005

mailto:[email protected]






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From caveat emptor to caveat venditor: debates about milk falsification in France andBritain, 1850-1925

AbstractPresent day concerns with food safety have thrown into relief the history of quality and

authenticity in food systems. This paper seeks to add a comparative dimension to our

understanding of the emergence of a food supply free of adulteration and falsification by

discussing the historical similarities and differences between France and Britain. They were

amongst the vanguard of countries seeking to act against food frauds in the half century or so

before the First World War and we consider the impact of their legislative and regulatory

regimes. The commodity we look at is milk because this was seen by contemporaries as the most

liable to manipulation by actors in the food chain, from the cowkeeper through to the wholesaler

and retailer. Our conclusion is that the seller of milk was compelled, by a combination of

improved technologies of detection and tighter state controls, to modify the mode and reduce the

amount of falsification. In addition, we note that the normative ambitions of the authorities led,

particularly in Britain, to a need to define what was meant by genuine whole or separated milk

and thereby to introduce a regulatory and administrative commentary on the ‘natural’. Such

definitions and the legal consequences that followed were strongly contested on both sides of the

Channel.



3

From caveat emptor to caveat venditor: debates about milk falsification in France and

Britain, 1850-19251

What is adulteration, and what does it mean? It means the lowering of the physique of

the nation, the poisoning of the people, the deterioration of our constitutions, and

morally a fraud practised by the seller on the buyer – a cheating to which we have

become so callous that it has hardened our conscience for honesty in bigger things.

Phillips Bevan, quoted in The Anti-Adulteration Review, I (1871), 4.

The definition of adulteration is obvious is it not? It is cheating; adding or subtracting from

natural food in a way designed to defraud the consumer. So much seems to be common sense.

But, as this paper will show, adulteration, and ‘falsification’ in the broader sense, were by no

means ‘obvious’ or easy to deal with for the authorities in either France or Britain.2 Fraud and

falsification are at the intersection of law and economics, commercial rules and health care. Our

main aims are to understand how these different elements came to be articulated together in a

market economy; how they meshed with scientific knowledge and expertise; and how legal

frameworks of regulation were established through legislation and case law.

We will concentrate on liquid milk because ‘there are few articles of food more liable to

adulteration’ and also because milk in our chosen period was particularly interesting as both acommercial and a medical product. 3 The health implications of dirt and disease in milk meant

that it came to be regulated differently from other foodstuffs in both degree and kind. Further

complications arose from its position on the frontier between ‘natural’ and ‘manufactured’

products, that is, between agriculture and industry. The definition of ‘true’, ‘pure’ milk was, and

still is, important in societies and economies confronted with the industrialisation of agriculture.

This last question also explains why a comparative approach is required: urbanization and

the industrialisation of agriculture took shape differently around Europe, even in neighbouring

countries. Concerning milk, a comparison between France and England is pertinent in that it was

at the core of debates, particularly about health and quality, in both countries. Policies about food

frauds adopted in one country were discussed in the other, and with a mutuality of influence, but

different outcomes need to be explained as well as the similarities.

Our paper will address six themes. First, by way of background, we will describe the milk

industries of the two nations. These were divergent, although the levels of fraud appear to have

been similar in their large cities. Second, it is necessary to give a brief account of the early history

of falsification and relate it to the growth of public awareness and of the political will to act. The



4

third and fourth sections will deal with technical issues related to measurement and traceability.

To this day, these remain major concerns of food scientists and technologists.4 Fifth, we look at

the clarifications and complexities introduced by the involvement of science and, sixthly, the

legislative and regulatory responses will be raised.5 Finally, the impact of the regulation of

falsification upon the milk trade will be considered. In addition to these points, we wish to

acknowledge two other aspects of milk quality that we will not have time to address in depth in

the present paper. The first relates to the ‘cleanliness’ of milk in the sense of the absence of dirt,

and the second concerns disease spread through infected milk. Both are important aspects of

quality and have been discussed elsewhere.6

I

Across western Europe the process of food system modernization since the mid-nineteenth

century has brought with it problems of organization, food safety and quality, especially for the

commissariat of the rapidly growing metropolitan centres. With regard to the state regulation of

these evolving systems, it is our contention that comparative histories yield valuable insights into

the ways in which different polities have developed their views on risk, trust and the need for

public intervention. Food is of course the bundle of commodities that absorbed the largest

portion of consumers’ budgets and, throughout the period under review, it also posed a major

environmental challenge to their health. Food politics therefore remained lively and there were vigorous debates on whether governments should step in with frameworks of guidance and

control.

The market for milk was increasing rapidly throughout our period (Table 1), with an

acceleration in both countries towards the end of the nineteenth century. This increase correlates

on the supply side with technical progress on production and preservation; and on the demand

side with two factors: a rise in real wages for working people, and the substitution by many

working mothers of cow’s milk for breast feeding.

< Table 1 >

At times there was a mismatch between supply and demand. In hot summer weather, for

instance, there were two problems. First, pasture occasionally became scarce and milk yields fell,

causing shortfalls in supply, which could be as much as twenty-five per cent lower in the late

summer than in the spring.7 Second, where there was an absence of cooling facilities, hot

weather made it difficult to deliver such a perishable commodity in perfect condition. There was



5

often a temptation on the part of farmers, especially if they were subject to contractual targets,

and also of middlemen and retailers, to stretch the milk available to them on any day when

supplies were short, either by using chemical preservatives to prolong its shelf-life, or by adding

water or skimmed milk.

The major British cities varied in their access to fresh milk. Manchester, for instance, was

fortunate to be close to the numerous small dairy farms on the flanks of the Pennines, whereas

Liverpool relied more upon city-based cowkeepers. In both cases, the advent of the railways

eased the friction of distance and opened up hitherto specialist dairy manufacturing districts such

as Cheshire.8 From the 1850s onwards, farmers who had traditionally produced butter and

cheese woke up to the market opportunities presented by the increasing numbers of urban liquid

milk consumers. So many switched a part or all of their enterprise over to city supply, that this

may justifiably be seen as one of the most fundamental structural changes of British agriculture in

the period of study, especially in the decades when the profitability of cereals was under threat

from cheap imports.9 Distance remained a factor, however, with farmers being at a disadvantage

if they were located far away from a railway station.10

In France the railway system took longer to develop and network connectivity with

livestock farming areas was less convenient than in Britain.11 As a result, Paris in 1900 continued

to rely on milk from the many cowsheds still present in its built-up, whereas in London urban

milk production had declined rapidly from the 1880s.12

But Paris did have two other sources ofsupply. The first is what we might call the ‘peri-urban’ milk that could be delivered by the

producer to customers’ houses within three hours of milking. This came by road or by short

train journey from the environs of the city. Second, there were individual farmers or groups,

whose milk was transported in special wagons over distances of up to 100 kms.13 This was finally

sold to the consumer a long time, sometimes days, after milking and often having undergone

chemical preservation. Ironically, in Paris the urban cow-keepers therefore survived because of

their image of producing fresher, healthier milk than their more distant rivals.

The concentration of production and technical progress in the French liquid milk

industry was stimulated by the rise of cooperatives. In 1902, there were more than 3300 such

dairy establishments nationwide collecting twelve million hectolitres.14 By then sharp practice

was on the wane but, with so many players in the market, there remained scope for unscrupulous

profit-making. In Britain cooperative dairying was never as significant as on the Continent. The

Cooperative Wholesale Society (CWS) was a channel for some farmers and local retail

cooperatives were also involved, largely in working-class industrial districts, but the bulk of the

market was dominated by large, privately owned dairy companies, some of the largest in Europe



6

at that time. The United Dairies, for instance, controlled sixty-five per cent of the London milk

supply in 1922 and handled an annual total of 4.9 million hectolitres.15 These large companies

built their reputations on the speed and efficiency of their delivery, and also on quality of their

milk, untouched by any form of falsification. The Aylesbury Dairy in London led the way,

followed later by the CWS and United Dairies.

In conclusion, the evolution of the two milk industries was somewhat different in kind

and in pace of development. Yet Britain and France experienced similar pressures in their

perishable food systems and, in the case of milk, it was not so much the overall spatial structure

of their filières as local imperfections and seasonal factors that encouraged fraud of one kind or

another.

II

In Britain, falsification was a coping mechanism for many small, financially-challenged corner

shopkeepers, particularly with regard to commodities such as milk, where even substantial

tampering was difficult to detect by eye.16 It was one of the many forms of petty crime that, in

societies where the power of the regulating authorities is weak, may be seen as ‘inevitable’ by

traders and consumers alike, either due to the meagre resources allocated for inspection, or

because of technical problems with detection. Such falsification became so universal and so

routine that, for the farmer, trader and retailer at least, it was an everyday means of making amarginally legal living through those ‘little victories of daily life’ famously explored by Michel de

Certeau.17 By way of example, a dairy manager in London with twenty years experience reported

in 1914 that:

It is almost impossible to secure a carrier who will give proper measure…Giving short

measure is considered by the carrier to be almost their right and a carrier is not

considered a Milky by [his] fellows unless he can make 3d per barn gallon…by giving

each customer a shortage.18

In France it is not by chance that the first debates about milk falsification started soon after the

Napoleonic wars, when the question was whether ersatz foods and the emergency solutions

adopted at that time, such as milk with added water, were legal or not. Rules adopted between

1791 and 1810 (laws on fraud in the penal and civil codes) forbade these practices, but the

regulations were evidence-based and fraud had to be proved to secure a conviction. It was in this

context that science and the scientists were called upon to provide technical solutions.



7

British interest in the falsification of food was first aroused in 1820, with racy revelations

by Friedrich Accum.19 The British attention span was short, however, and it was not until the

1850s that the well-publicised efforts of Arthur Hill Hassall and his ‘Lancet Analytical Sanitary

Commission’ rekindled the public’s indignation.20 According to Hassall, he found:

that the adulteration of articles of consumption had been reduced to a system, to an art,

and almost to a science; that adulteration was the rule and purity the exception…21

Alphonse Chevallier was responsible for a similar surge of interest in France from 1850 and his

book went into seven editions over the next half-century.22 A particular French concern with the

plastering and watering of wine gave the issue momentum and contributed to the growth of a

substantial scientific and polemical literature.

Estimating levels of falsification at this time is problematic because identifying a fraud

depends fundamentally upon a definition of the ‘real’ product but the natural composition of

milk and its variations did not emerge reliably until the early twentieth century. Adopting the

conventions of the day, however, Peter Atkins has calculated that between 1850 and 1872

approximately three-quarters of the milk supply of London was adulterated to a greater or lesser

extent, with an average dilution of one quarter of added water and one third of butter fat

abstracted.23

This was probably the all-time peak of falsification but the crude watering of themid-century was later replaced, from the introduction of the mechanical separator in 1878

onwards, by the extraction of cream. At that point there arose the strange phenomenon of

British cities becoming producers of butter, a sure sign of widespread fraud. 24 From the 1890s, a

third phase was ushered in by the ‘toning’ or blending of whole milk with separated fresh milk or

skimmed, condensed milk. This simple form of compositional manipulation became so

widespread in the twentieth century that it eventually ceased to be thought of as fraudulent.

This periodization was similar to that in France. The watering of milk was widespread in

the first half of the nineteenth century, followed by the extraction of cream and finally the

addition of colourants. As a whole, 35.4 per cent of milk samples examined in 1907 in the main

French towns and Départements were judged as falsified to some extent.25 This percentage fell to

around 20 per cent as a more effective system of public food analysis and policing was adopted.

The extraction of cream was the most widespread adulteration: 50 per cent of the samples

examined in some areas.26

In Britain, the annual reports of Medical Officers of Health published the results of food

analyses and these became an important part in the accelerated circulation of knowledge about



8

falsification that was also assisted by the development of a scientific literature in journals such as

the Proceedings of the Society of Public Analysts (1876), which became The Analyst (1877- present). Also in

the 1870s, a trade press started in London with the Milk Journal (1871-2), followed by the Dairy

(1889-1938), and the Dairyman (1876-1900), which eventually merged with the Cowkeeper and

Dairyman's Journal (1879-1904).27 Other column inches on milk issues were to be found in the

general farming press and specialist producers’ publications such as the Journal of the British Dairy

Farmers' Association (1877-1962) and the Dairy World and the British Dairy Farmer (1898-1939).28

In France L’Industrie Laitière was founded in Paris in 1876 by E. Chesnel and F.

Delahonde, who sought to popularize the best manufacturing methods and apparatus and, thanks

to their newspaper, in 1878 the French Society for the Encouragement of the Milk Industry was

created at the time of the World Fair of 1878.29 Others appeared after 1884 when professional

associations were legalized, among them Le Laitage (1889) and La Laiterie et les Industries de la Ferme

(1891-1939). On the other side of the fence, covering the world of the regulators, there was also

the varied and authoritative Revue d’Hygiène et de Police Sanitaire (1879-1939).

In Britain, there were also a number of journals that reported on adulteration issues. The

Anti-Adulteration Review ran monthly from 1871 to 1886 but it was little more than a means of

reprinting cuttings from other sources, especially concerning court cases. Its successor, Food and

Sanitation , a weekly paper (1892-1900), had the added dimension of campaigning journalism. The

editor, M. Henry, was enthusiastic about the system in France but bitterly critical, as we will seelater, of Somerset House, the chemical court of appeal in London.

By the end of our chosen period, even the popular daily and weekly press were reporting

incidents of milk falsification, usually court proceedings. The rapidly evolving structure of the

print media Britain and the relatively high rates of literacy and of newspaper readership meant

that public awareness was raised more quickly there than in France, but in Europe as a whole the

politics of food reform were still less driven by demands from ‘consumer citizens’ than was the

case in America.30 This raises the still relevant question of the production and circulation of

information concerning product quality: Producers’, traders’, consumers’ and scientists’

definitions of quality are not necessarily the same; the question is how to conciliate such a

diversity within an increasingly international market and above all with an international scientism.

III

What is natural milk? In retrospect the lack of an answer to this question was an obstacle to early

discussions about falsification. In Britain, official committees in 1894, 1896 and 1901 gathered

evidence and eventually concluded that it was both possible and desirable to set ‘presumptive



9

standards’ of milk composition. These were enshrined in the 1901 Sale of Milk and Cream

Regulations as minima of 3.0 per cent butter fat and 8.5 per cent solids-non-fat.31 The

regulations assumed that milk below these standard thresholds was adulterated until the contrary

could be proved.

Britain was not the innovator in this field, however. In Belgium, analysts of the State

Agricultural Laboratory had already decided in 1895 upon a 2.8 per cent fat standard and 8.7 per

cent for solids-non-fat, and in the same year the Rotterdam authorities in the Netherlands settled

on 2.5 per cent and 8.5 per cent (Table 2). In Denmark 2.5 per cent fat was the minimum for the

supply of Copenhagen, and in France in 1897 a Municipal Commission on milk had concluded

that 3.0 and 8.5 per cent respectively were appropriate for Paris.32

< Table 2 >

Both France and Britain had their internal debates about the need for compulsion concerning

compositional standards but there was also an important international dimension. For instance,

there were discussions at the International Congresses that proliferated in the late nineteenth and

early twentieth centuries. These provided a meeting ground for scientists and regulators on

general issues such as hygiene or demography, and on specialist medical or industrial topics. Milk

issues were an important element within these meetings, usually discussed from the perspectivesof regulation and dairy science.

At the International Congress of Hygiene in Brussels (1902), for example, there was a

collective attempt to agree a definition of milk and, from there, a distinction between whole milk,

skimmed milk and condensed milk. The point of departure was a paper by Frédéric Bordas that

proposed a definition of milk under three headings. First, he urged the banning of added

chemicals.33 In France there was already a general opposition from the hygienist lobby to the

penetration of chemistry into the agro-food sector. They disliked the notion of preservatives and

artificial colouring matter but some went further and argued against the use of any compositional

standards that required scientific analysis. Thus Bordas ‘did not want to admit minima, at least

for France’, because of regional differences, climatic variations, and different breeds of cow.’34

Delaye (from Liège) supported him and remarked that ‘milk is a natural product and we must

accept it as presented by nature, which is very capricious about the products that it provides us.’35

The same argument had been used for bread in the eighteenth century and for wine

throughout the nineteenth century. It was said that such a ‘natural product’ could not have a

constant chemical composition and so the classification of milk and its components did not make



10

sense. Such a definition of a ‘natural’ product explains the hostility of many contemporary

hygienists towards the use of disinfectants and preservatives in food. Their ideal of a natural

product excluded at the same time both chemicals and any heavy administrative intervention.

According to this point of view, imposed standards would cause unfavourable selectivity and

would facilitate fraud. This was why Delaye proposed the following definition: ‘milk, a liquid

such as nature provides coming from healthy animals’.’36 But would hygienists have accepted

fixed values differentiated by country and region? One answer was that it was not so much a

question of regional differences as that of the food of the cow influencing milk and its

composition. We will address this issue in the following section.

These differing definitions of milk indicate that in France different actors had varying

perspectives on ‘falsification’. The advocates of a generic definition of milk primarily feared

institutionalised chemistry and the industrialization of agriculture and they sought to ban or

heavily control margarine and skimmed milk; whereas those in favour of fixed compositional

standards focused on traditional commercial frauds such as watering and cream abstraction.

Eventually, the Congress voted on and adopted the first approach, based on the definition of

Bordas.

However, the deliberations were far from over. The definition of skimmed milk,

necessary to supplement the approved proposal, was an explosive issue. Indeed Bordas’s second

proposal was that ‘the bye-products of the milk industry, such as skimmed milk, partiallyskimmed, centrifuged milk, and poor milk, should not be used for the food of new-born babies,

patients and old people.’37 Skimmed milk would thus not have been prohibited, but it could only

have been sold as such and only for certain categories of consumer. Inevitably, this definition

contained several elements of uncertainty, as shown by the debate that followed, in which

arguments concerning commercial fraud cross-cut with those related more directly to public

health. Thus, enthusiasts for compositional minima thought it necessary to require a threshold

for practical purposes and that skimmed milk had therefore to be prohibited or given its own

standards. Others (Chassevant, for example) observed that ‘by monitoring the production of milk

in the cattle shed it is possible to avoid fraud.’38

The Congress eventually approved Bordas’s second proposal and moved on to discuss

his third point, that ‘these bye-products represent a food value which cannot be neglected, but

they should be on sale only in special shops or after they have been given a particularly distinctive

description.’ He justified this definition on the grounds that since ‘skimmed milk is used to dilute

whole milk; it must be sold in special shops.’39



11

This proposal attracted three kinds of criticisms; first, there was no standard, in France

and several other countries, which made a distinction between these two products. 40 Second, the

‘fraud’ of which Bordas spoke was actually legal in large French cities; so in the towns and in the

countryside the separation of the two types of trade would have presented a major difficulty.

Third, ‘skimmed milk is a dairy product; so those who consider only whole milk as a food miss

the point.’ Because of these criticisms, the sub-section of the Congress dealing with questions of

food safety rejected Bordas’s proposal. However, by a sleight of hand, it was reintroduced and

approved with a very narrow majority in a plenary session.41

The British delegates at the Brussels Congress spoke in favour of their own Sale of Milk

and Cream Regulations that had been adopted in 1901.42 Despite the complex and changing

nature of knowledge in dairy chemistry, these standards (3.0 per cent fat, 8.5 per cent solids-non-

fat) stood the test of time throughout most of the twentieth century. This was certainly not

because milk politics were any less colourful than in France; it was more that the nature of the

debate in Britain was diff erent. The strand of thought that we have here called ‘international

hygienism’ held less sway than on the Continent, for a number of reasons bound up with the

development of somewhat different scientific and bureaucratic contexts under the influence of a

faster and more intensive urbanization and industrialization than in France.

The Second International Congress for the control of food fraud, held in Paris in

November 1909, mostly confirmed the decisions made at Brussels.43

It passed a resolution callingfor skimmed milk to be stored, transported and sold in appropriate receptacles and clearly

labelled. This reflected judgements in law courts around Europe condemning mixtures of whole

and skimmed milk. In addition, the Congress confirmed the general hostility of hygienists to

chemical and industrial means of preservation.44 However these resolutions did not solve the

problem of a link between the quality of milk and cow management. A question remained as to

whether falsification, as a technical and juridical category, was possible only after the act of

milking or before. We will investigate this in the next section.

IV

The ingenious livestock management practices of certain Parisian and London cow-keepers show

why hygienists called for preventative measures and for the prioritisation of natural foods. From

the mid-nineteenth century onwards it seems that milch cattle in both cities were fed on watery

rations such as brewer’s grains. Dr Ritter of Nancy revealed evidence of this practice in 1878 in a

paper to the Society of Public Medicine in which he discussed analyses of milk having a high

proportion of potash salts, five times that of normal milk. His research made it possible to



12

establish that these values were the consequence of the cows being fed with beet and brewer’s

grains. Ritter concluded that ‘there was thus no fraud, but the food of the cows was bad.’45 In

1882 Charles Girard, Director of the Municipal Laboratory of Paris, challenged this conclusion

by insisting that to say that ‘the milk has not been watered’ was mere semantics. He claimed that

‘the cow -keepers cannot pretend ignorance. These are acts of a regular and guilty practice, an

intentional act for money, to enhance quantity at the expense of quality. In fact everyone knows,

and cow-keepers better than anybody, that the quality of milk is connected and proportional to

the health of the dairy animal.’46

Traceability, in the sense of the relationship between the inputs and the output, was by no

means as straightforward as Girard implied, however. Unlike industrial production, the

relationship between the cow’s food and the end product was not well-known. Several experts at

the time even doubted the existence of close links between the two.47 Thus, Robin wrote that

among milk producers in France ‘generally there is respect for advice on good feed’ but ‘the

closer to Paris, the food of dairy cows is rich in farinaceous food and ordinary water is replaced

by brewer’s grains.’ However, it was not proven that these changes affected the quality of milk,

which was strongly related to the breed of cow. In fact, throughout our period popular notions

of intensive breeding of livestock rested upon the conviction that animals had inherent

characteristics that were more significant than environmental variables such as fodder. As a

result, the legal implications become extremely difficult to determine. Could one speak of a milkfraud when only the cattle feed had been modified?

This example raises not only the problem of defining ‘real’ and ‘intentional’ falsification

but also the issue of how to regulate to prevent frauds of a marginal nature that were scientifically

detectable only indirectly. We will now turn to the efforts by legislators and administrators in the

two countries to improve the ‘authenticity’ of their respective milk supplies.

V

In France a proto-science of food emerged out of debates about hygiene, with two initial

purposes: first, to refine the measuring instruments and the levels of traceability and, second, to

ask for the prohibition of certain products or substances even when there was some scientific

uncertainty about their harmful character. The ‘precautionary principle’, in the presence of

scientific uncertainty, values the normative ambitions of scientists over those of Parliament and

the judiciary; and, in the eyes of scientists, this principle was essential because, in the economic

arena, it was the supply-side that conditioned and formed demand. The consumer would

otherwise be defenceless vis-à-vis the producer.



13

As in Britain, different laboratories had different technical specifications and so analytical

control was effectively decentralized at first. Following the lead of the City of Paris Laboratory,

but with the difference of Bordas’s suggestion approved by the International Congress of

Hygiene, minimum values of the principal components of milk were identified and attention was

also given to the hygienic conditions of production.

There was a dance between the methods employed by falsifiers and analysts. Girard, the

Director of the Municipal Laboratory in Paris, had in the 1880s given the composition of ‘natural

milk’ in terms of density, cream, percentage of water and he had extracted butter, lactine, casein,

salts and albumin. He declared that the thinnest whole milk gave 122 grams of dry extract per

litre. ‘One could consequently consider that all the milks whose dry extract did not reach this

minimum, must be regarded as falsified.’48 He thought that severe regulation was necessary. The

increase in the personnel of the laboratory in 1883 and 1885 made it possible to increase the

sampling programme. Each dealer or cow-keeper in Paris was visited at least once per annum (in

general twice). Inspectors were provided with a lactometer and a thermometer and took samples

of milk that seemed suspect by their low density or bluish appearance.49 The rate of sampling had

increased in 1881 and 1884, and after that the figure was constant at between 350 and 440 per

month. Two chemists were alternately in charge of this service, each one analysing all of the

milks that arrived on his day of service within forty-eight hours. Girard was satisfied with the

results: ‘the quality of milk has improved in Paris. Since 1884, the percentage of watered milkshad fell from thirty-one to fourteen per cent. We count milk as bad that contains less than 108

grams of extracts.’50 In Britain the state analytical services were only modestly funded and it was

the large dairy companies that undertook the vast majority of milk sampling and testing. Their

unwillingness for commercial reasons to reveal information about any falsified milk delivered to

them by their suppliers is perhaps understandable.

Unfortunately the techniques of adulteration evolved as quickly as the science of

detection and any definition of ‘falsification’ based on the components of the product was likely

to be overtaken quickly. For example, milk watering was the most widespread fraud in France at

this date. The Revue d’Hygiène reported in 1897 that a doctor in Lyon had ‘noted the following

adulteration of milk: when the cream starts to rise, milk gradually loses its sweet taste. If the top

of the milk is decanted this modification of the taste of milk is very noticeable; moreover the milk

gains density when the cream is removed, because that is the lightest part. In addition, water

containing seventy-five grams of cane sugar per litre has exactly the same density as pure milk.

Therefore, by replacing a volume of cream by an equal volume of water sweetened to sixty-five

per cent, the milk recovers its taste and its normal density.’



14

Many British writers admired the French approach to detecting falsification and

punishing the perpetrators.51 The editor of Food and Sanitation , M. Henry, was enthusiastic about

the system across the Channel but bitterly critical of Somerset House, the chemical court of

appeal in London.52 He spoke, for instance, of ‘the existing wretched, ignorant, and utterly

untrustworthy system of food analysis at Somerset house'.53 It was a ‘poor, bungling department

struggling to perform work for which it has not got the skill or knowledge’, and ‘scientifically the

Somerset House chemists are dead, and there exists no shadow of an excuse for their remaining

unburied’.

The nub of his complaint was that, from the 1870s onwards, the government scientists

adopted a low standard of butter fat (2.5 per cent), which meant that many frauds went

undetected. They wished to rule out false negatives and err on the side of generosity in cases

where there was a possibility that the cow had given rather thin but nevertheless genuine milk.

Analysts employed by local authorities and the larger and more reputable dairy companies used

substantially higher standards (3.0 per cent fat or higher) and it was by no means unusual for

cases of falsification referred on appeal to Somerset House to be dismissed, infuriating the

prosecuting authorities.54

Food and Sanitation complained in 1894 that ‘pure milk in London is at the present-day

practically unobtainable, save from the Aylesbury Dairy Company...the article vended generally as

pure milk consists of some seven or eight gallons of separated milk practically deprived of its fatand a gallon of water added to each twenty gallons of genuine milk’. This gives an average of 8.5

per cent solids-non-fat and 2.5 per cent fat, which would have passed at Somerset House. This

compared unfavourably with the Aylesbury Dairy Company’s average analysis of its milk at 8.77

per cent and 3.91 respectively.55 Part of the problem seems to have been a lack of political will at

the centre. According to Henry, ‘when we began this journal nearly two years ago, it seemed

hopeless to arouse Parliament, local authorities, or even the penny dreadful press to the

realization of the enormous importance of the subject. No member of the House of Commons

knew or cared a rap about the question...’.56

< Table 3 >

The uneasy relationship between politics and technology was an issue here. Politicians are rarely

willing to back tentative science with laws and regulations, yet the history of the nascent system

of food analysis in our period was replete with examples of scientific uncertainty. Table 3 lists

the main techniques employed to detect falsification but, what may appear at first sight to be a



15

simple narrative of technical improvements, hides rivalry and significant disagreements about the

validity of results. James Wanklyn in his well-publicised analyses for the Milk Journal in the early

1870s, for instance, had used the tough standards of 9.3 per cent solids-non-fat and 3.2 per cent

fat to identify fraud, and the Society of Public Analysts’ (SPA) standard adopted in 1874 was only

a little easier at 9 per cent and 2.5 per cent. A decade later, when Dr Adams of Maidstone

devised a more efficient laboratory method of fat extraction, the SPA had to adjust their limits to

8.5 per cent and 3.0 per cent respectively because Wanklyn’s method was shown to have seriously

underestimated the amount of fat.57 Both were subject to alarming variations in results between

laboratories (Table 4) and this operator error continued to be a problem, although to a lesser

extent, with the improved solvent and wet extraction methods.

< Table 4 >

In both countries scientific knowledge was an uneasy partner for the analysts and regulators.

Despite their best efforts, the inventors of techniques of physical and chemical analysis were

unable to devise methods that were both accurate enough and sufficiently fool-proof, firstly to

eliminate the possibility of false results leading to the conviction of honest farmers and traders,

and, secondly, to outwit the sophisticated methods used by the real fraudsters. As a result, the

situation remained unresolved at the end of our period, emphasizing the impact that scientificuncertainty has had on the definition and the enforcement of rules and regulations.

VI

The rows at the Brussels Congress were inspired by ‘international hygienists’. They were in

essence similar to disputes in both France and Britain about the general relationship between

commercial legislation and the protection of the public health. The debate was among, on the

one hand, those who were convinced that the market could, either alone, or with some

corrections, offer the best possible food, and, on the other hand, those who thought that direct

administrative control was needed. These views were complicated further by differences between

those who were content with the natural quality variations of agricultural produce and opposed

any attempt at standardization, while others, on the contrary, insisted upon a role for science.

In France in 1896, the mayors of Lyon and Bordeaux both published decrees based on

Article 97 of the Law of 1884. This article declared that the municipal police force was

responsible for ‘inspecting the honesty of the trade in food products sold by weight or

measurement and of the healthiness of comestibles exposed for sale’. They also required that



16

skimmed milk had to be in cans with a label carrying in clear, heavy type the words ‘skimmed

milk’. In Lyon the label had to be half the height and width of the container and the type at least

a third of the height of the label; in Bordeaux there was added the proviso that ‘any milk will be

regarded as skimmed milk if it is less than 5° on the lactometer.’58

The Minister of Agriculture, lobbied by producers and tradesmen alike, ‘hesitated to

regard these decrees as legal since they seemed to him likely to attack commercial freedom; in his

opinion, any measure obliging a dairy merchant to differentiate by label full cream milk from

skimmed milk is, in the current state of the legislation, open to dispute.’ Similar provisions had

been widely adopted for wine and butter, where action had been approved by the state, a

surprising double standard since the public health was more directly affected by the adulteration

of milk than the watering of wine.

The minister eventually called on the Comité Consultatif d’Hygiène for an opinion. The

answer was actually rather favourable to the mayors: ‘for our part, we believe that the mayors can

draw upon Article 97 of the Law of 1884; however, this principle conceded, it is necessary to see

whether certain aspects of their decrees are not sullied by the abuse of power.’ They did not

think that the bye-laws blocked the freedom of trade, ‘only the freedom to falsify’. At the same

time, in their opinion the skimming of milk should be regarded as a falsification in the provisions

of the Law of 1851 only when it reached a certain proportion: ‘When milk does not contain a

given quantity of cream, the mayor has the right and even the duty to prohibit its sale as milk. Thus the decrees of the mayors are legal; but it is their use of the additional provisions which

constitute an abuse of power’. In particular there was excess in the imposition of the heavy type

face on the label insisted upon by the Mayor of Lyon and the white and blue colours by the

Mayor of Bordeaux.59 After the Comité ’s decision, the police court of Bordeaux declared the

regulations to be ‘legal and obligatory’. Yet some of the accused were released when it was found

that the selection of milk samples had been unsatisfactory.’60

Hygienists such as Ogier and Bordas were infuriated by the Comité’ s intervention. They

reminded readers of the Revue d’Hygiène that the values given by a lactometer changed according

to the breed of cow, its food, the ambient temperature, and other factors. They criticised the

provisions adopted in Bordeaux and Lyon because, while outlawing some forms of adulteration,

they gave the appearance of normality to the skimming of milk, which, in their view, constituted

a falsification.’61

This dispute about skimmed milk in France reproduced in many ways those earlier

concerning wine. The hygienists and the administrators agreed that the alteration of these

products must be policed in the sense of divulging information that the market by itself would



17

not always be ready to deliver. At the same time, the solution, which consisted of ‘correcting’ the

market without intervening in the production, was enforced mainly in relation to ‘falsifications’

such as skimming and watering, which primarily affected the honesty of transactions and the

consumer’s diet.

It was not until 1905 that a Service de la Répression de Fraudes was established by the

Préfecture de Police in Paris but, in theory at least, this did control milk quality from the farm to

the doorstep.62 Further measures came in 1927, with a clean-up of production and the

introduction of a seal of approval, ‘lait officellement contrôlé’.63

As we have seen, the debate about falsification was re-established in Britain in the 1850s,

following The Lancet ’s publication of a series of revelations by the analyst Hassall. Public opinion

was sufficiently moved for the government to appoint the Scholefield Committee into the

Adulteration of Food, Drinks and Drugs, which reported in 1856. At last, the 1860 Sale of Food

and Drugs Act made it an offence to sell any article of food or drink which was injurious to

health, adulterated or not pure. But this was a rather ineffective measure and was soon followed

by Acts in 1872, 1875 and 1879, that were altogether more purposive, shifting the burden of

proof from the purchaser ( caveat emptor ) having to show fraudulent intent on the part of the trader

to one of strict liability for the nature of the product sold ( caveat venditor ).64 As a result, analysts

were appointed by many local authorities and the large cities began the systematic sampling of

milk. These data series are invaluable for understanding the nature and extent of fraud but theyare unreliable to a certain extent because of the variation of methods of analysis and of the levels

at which samples were declared to be fraudulent.

In Britain the falsification debate was similar, with some variations, to that in France.

There was friction, principally between the local authorities and the various actors in the milk

trade. The Medical Officers of Heath and their staff were legally empowered to take samples but

there was a great deal of variation in the enthusiasm with which this duty was performed.

Smaller towns and rural districts in particular made less effort. Thus Durham City paid a retaining

fee of five guineas per annum to an analyst for twenty years before a single sample was analyzed

in the 1890s.65 By contrast, in Manchester from 1879 onwards, falsified milk samples were traced

back from the city retailer, to the railway station and, if necessary, to the farm.66 It is not

surprising that farmers and dealers who were caught in this elaborate net should feel aggrieved.

Gross frauds were perpetrated in other parts of the country but were going unpunished due to a

lack of political will or funds upon which to build an administrative system.

The professional milk adulterator seems to have studied, like the professional gambler the



18

doctrine of chances. Calculating his chance of a visit from the Food and Drugs Act

Inspector it would run in some districts, judged by the samples taken, to once in a

thousand years...67

Among the loudest voices heard, both in the press and in Parliament, were those of a

powerful lobby opposing legal sanctions against honest farmers and dealers. As in France, the

natural variations of cow’s milk were noted but opposition to chemical analysis was less virulent.

In Britain, by the turn of the century, most seem to have accepted the need for standards and the

argument now turned on the need to allow two exceptions. First, a written warranty of

compositional quality from a farmer was said to be sufficient under certain circumstances to

remove liability from the purchasing wholesaler. Second, there was a call for farmers to be

allowed an ‘appeal to the cow’ where they could prove that any doubtful milk came from an

animal that ordinarily produced thin, watery milk.

Gradually the weight of legal precedent and expert opinion moved in favour of the

commercial interests. In 1911, for instance, E.G. Haygarth-Brown pointed out to his colleagues

in the Ministry of Agriculture that local authorities had misunderstood the nature of the 1901

regulations.

In the administration of the Law as to the sale of milk is exceedingly difficult and variesin different districts. In some districts the mere fact that milk falls below limits referred to

in the sale of Milk Regulations is regarded as sufficient to justify the issue of a summons.

This view is incorrect. The local authorities overlook the fact that not only is it, generally

speaking, no offence against the Food and Drugs Acts to sell milk which is below the

limits mentioned in the sale of Milk Regulations provided it is genuine, but also the fact

that the proportion of butterfat or solids not fat in a sample of milk falls below him these

limits is only prima facie evidence of adulteration…It is doubtful whether it is possible to

administer the present law strictly enough to keep down adulteration without incurring

great risk of instituting proceedings against sellers of milk which is genuine though

poor.68

At the end of our period, the regulations and their enforcement in Britain were in disarray. The

legal decisions in Hunt v. Richardson (1916) and Grigg v. Smith (1917) shifted the weight of

proof to a question of whether the milk sampled was as it had come from the cow and therefore

‘appeal to the cow’ became admissible.69 Politicians began to lose faith in their own judgement,



19

the most glaring case coming in 1923 when the Minister of Agriculture issued a circular

instructing local authorities to desist from prosecutions on the basis of single samples in order to

eliminate unfair prosecutions. He very soon had to withdraw that advice and re-institute the

previous practice in the face of a storm of protest from the British Medical Association and the

public health press.70 The milk trade may have won a fairer consideration of their complaints but

they had by no means carried all before them.

VII

The dairy companies that grew to prominence in our period were highly significant in the

discourse about adulteration. Despite occasional convictions for minor offences with regard to

the quality and composition of their product, the large corporations such as the United Dairies

and the Cooperative movement gradually gained a reputation with the public for supplying milk

of an acceptable quality. This was built through an extraordinary effort on their part to monitor

and privately regulate the milk of their suppliers; as a result, sales increased and this tranche of

industry was able to maintain its profitability. After the Great War, Ben Davies, the first Director

of Laboratories for United Dairies, was a particularly vigorous actor in this regard and a frequent

commentator generally about the state of the industry. He criticized the farming community for

their lax and at times dishonest attitudes and continually pushed central government to show

more commitment to the enforcement of high standards. In the early 1920s, his company aloneexamined seven times more samples of milk and cream than all of the local authorities in

England and Wales put together and inevitably this gave them a strong voice in both commercial

and political circles.71

There is no evidence that British dairy companies were trying to undermine the authority

of local analysts but the sheer weight of their resources made it difficult for all of the other

stakeholders, from farmers to retailers, from local authorities to central government, to compete

on grounds of theoretical knowledge, scientific methods, or laboratory results.

The rise of large-scale wholesaling in Britain started from the late nineteenth century, in

the form of joint stock and some private companies. The development in France was later,

through four ‘integrated distributors’: La Société Laitière Maggi, les Laitières Hauser, la Société

Amiot and le Lait Integral.72 In both countries these developments coincided with the early

phase of modern mass marketing.73 One might think that liquid milk is an unpromising product

for an advertising makeover, but this is exactly what happened in Britain with the foundation of

the National Milk Publicity Council in 1920. The NMPC was largely funded by the industry and,

despite early teething problems, it laid the early foundations of a public awareness of the positive



20

aspects of milk consumption.74 There were local lectures, window displays, exhibitions and baby

weeks, along with the publication of pamphlets and newspaper advertising, but possibly most

powerful innovation was a range of visual imagery through the media of posters and film.

Developments in France were about ten years behind, again with advertising in the forefront,

organized by the larger progressive distributors and the cooperatives rather than by the state. 75

We think it reasonable to argue that the gradually improving reputation of milk on both

sides of the channel, partly as a result of reduced falsification, facilitated this mass marketing and

worked to the further advantage of all in the trade, from farmer to retailer. This was a time when

objections were being raised about the nutritional impact of processed foods, for instance the use

of farinaceous patent foods for infants, the substitution of margarine for butter, and the

introduction of roller-milled flour for flour produced by less efficient pre-industrial techniques.

Yet milk was following a contrary trend, to greater respect.76 The acceptance after the War of the

nutritional richness of milk, largely through work on vitamins, encouraged its use as a medical

food with fortifying properties.77 In the 1920s in Britain, the extent of its rehabilitation in the

mind of the public was confirmed by a large-scale expansion of school milk. This would only

have been possible if it was considered on the whole to be safe and, in general terms, over the

worst problems of falsification.78 In France such trust was withheld a little longer because the

legislative framework there was not revised until 1935.79

VIII

By 1925 the seller of milk in both France and Britain was under pressure as never before.

Falsification was still common, in the form of toning and short-measure but legislation,

particularly in Britain the Act of 1875, and in France the Law of 1884, coupled with slow

improvements in the respective systems of regulation, had meant that by the turn of the century

in both countries the grossest of frauds fifty years before were less frequent.

Instead of added water or abstracted cream, the public throughout western Europe were

becoming more concerned about the connexions between diet and health. Thus, milk ‘warm

from the cow’ had early on been praised as being of high quality, but in the space of a few

decades, this milk, a ‘pure’ and expensive product, became synonymous with ‘toxicity’ because of

the discovery that untreated milk was an ideal medium for the multiplication of germs and very

commonly a source of infections. In Britain, far more than in France, the bovine variant of

tuberculosis was commonly found in milk supplies and fierce debates began about the best

means to counter this.80 Pasteurization was the solution favoured by the large dairy companies



21

and by most doctors but there was a large and vociferous minority against any heat treatment that

might have deleterious consequences for the natural properties of milk.81

These developments were not easy for ‘hygienists’ to live with. Although divided

amongst themselves on many topics, they agreed on their condemnation of the ‘lure of gain’ and

of the penetration of chemistry into the agro-food system. Their opposition to preservatives

constituted their last stand against the world of ‘marketing’. This fight was weakened from the

outset by their disagreements over what constituted a ‘natural product’. Values had been ascribed

to the principal components of the product, and criticisms were levelled at the ‘standardization’

of foodstuffs, always in the name of a ‘natural’ product. This is a dilemma that continues down to

the present day, for example in France with cheeses made from unpasteurized milk, where

consuming the ‘natural’ does not necessarily equate with the minimization of medical risk.

At the turn of the century new forms of falsification were emerging, not only on the end-

or quasi-finished-product but, right from the start of the production process. It was realised that

the food of the cows, for instance, could affect the quality of the milk. The hygienists, at last

conceding the need to allow for both science and regulation, were then confronted the need for a

new form of traceability. In order to control the whole supply chain from producer to consumer,

as had already happened in France with wine, they added the need for compositional analysis.

What finally gave a new impetus to the normative ambitions of the scientists was that the

definition of standards could not do without the detailed analysis of the products. This affectedtheir view of the relationship between standards and economic activity. In common with several

economic societies, the hygienists blamed poor judgement in cases where standards ‘were badly

conceived’. According to this view, ‘quality’ was defined less by the market than by means of the

standards, which in turn were based on scientific knowledge. This ambition nevertheless was

thwarted by conflicts among the scientists themselves about ‘falsifications’ of foodstuffs.

There was disagreement over falsification between hygienists (medics and administrators)

and the milk industry because of the impact of regulation on the functioning of the market.

Although rarely expressed in this way, the debate was in essence about whether regulations

should prioritise public health or fair competition. The two are rarely compatible away from the

abstract theoretical world of economists and in our period market imperfections made

compromises particularly difficult to achieve. The regulations that emerged were solidified under

pressure from the opposing lobbies, although in France no official definition of milk was possible

because of disagreements among producers and traders, and also among the diverse group of

hygienists. It was at this time that our present-day perceptions of ‘food falsifications’ were



22

formed and in this light it is not surprising that current scandals and debates on food safety in

Europe are far from easy to clarify and resolve.

Significant similarities between the situations in Britain and France have emerged from

this paper. The drivers of science and technology were important, as were the development of

legal and regulatory regimes based upon a common belief that genuine milk could be

differentiated from milk modified by the various actors in the food chain. Differences arose over

the relative strength of the various interest groups in the two countries, with compositional

standards coming forward in Britain but not in France. We suspect that there were also

significant differences both within and between the two with regard to the implementation of

anti-fraud measures at the local level, and further work on this area would be welcome, as would

comparative work on other parts of Europe.

More work is also now required on the innovation process. There was a long-standing

technical struggle between the milk falsifiers, from farmers to retailers, and the food analysts

employed by the state. It would be interesting to know more about the timing and acceptance of

new methods by the main actors. We do not wish to reduce the history of food falsification to a

history of technology but our knowledge at this point is modest and limits the conclusions that

can be drawn from the present paper.



23

TABLE 1. Estimates of liquid milk consumption, litres per head per week

France Britain1845-1854 1.10 -1855-1864 1.42 -

1865-1874 1.35 0.731875-1884 1.35 1.121885-1894 1.32 1.551895-1904 1.58 1.561905-1914 1.80 1.67

Sources: H. Rew, ‘ An inquiry into the statistics of the production and consumption of milk andmilk products in Great Britain’, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society 55 (1892), pp. 244-78; D.J. Oddy,‘The working class diet, 1886-1914’ (PhD, London, 1970); D. Taylor, ‘ The development ofEnglish dairy farming c. 1860-1930’ (D.Phil., Oxford, 1971); J.C. Toutain, ‘La consommationalimentaire en France de 1789 à 1964, Économies e t Sociétés, Cahiers de l’I.S.E.A. 5, 11 (1971), p.

1953.

TABLE 2. The minimum milk compositional standards (percentages) acceptable in various jurisdictions at the turn of the century

Butter fat Solids-non-fatBelgium (1895) 2.8 8.7Rotterdam, Netherlands (1895) 2.5 8.5Copenhagen, Denmark 2.5 -Paris, France (1897) 3.0 8.5Prussia (1899) 2.7 -

21 states of USA 3.0-3.7 -Great Britain (1901) 3.0 8.5

Source: BPP 1901 (Cd 491), XXX, 386-87.

TABLE 3. Methods of milk fat analysis

Method TechniqueDry extraction Wanklyn

Adams coilSolvent extraction Soxhlet

Gottlieb/Röse Werner-Schmidt

Wet extraction De LavalLister/BabcockGerberLeffmann/Beam

Maceration Somerset House

Source: BPP 1901 (Cd 491), XXX, 401; A.W. Blyth and M.W. Blyth, Foods: their composition andanalysis 7th edition, revised by H.E. Cox (1927).



24

TABLE 4. Variation in results of six samples analysed in three laboratories (A, B, C)

Sample Fat (%) Solids-non-fat (%) Total solids (%)No 1

A 3.75 8.77 12.52

B 4.06 8.75 12.81C 3.90 8.64 12.54No 2

A 3.08 8.42 11.50B 3.56 8.33 11.89C 3.40 8.44 11.84No 3

A 3.58 8.98 12.56B 4.44 8.36 12.80C 3.90 9.03 12.93No 4

A 3.93 8.87 12.80B 3.75 8.89 12.64C 4.15 8.74 12.89No 5

A 3.61 8.94 12.55B 3.46 8.91 12.37C 3.90 8.90 12.80No 6

A 3.59 8.48 12.07B 3.54 8.70 12.24C 3.75 8.68 12.43

Source: BPP 1901 (Cd 491), XXX, Appendix VII.



25

Footnotes

1 Research for this article was at various times funded by the Wellcome Trust, the University of

Durham and the CNRS. We take full responsibility for the opinions expressed and for any errors

or omissions.2 Falsification as a technical term in France is inclusive of simple watering and cream abstraction

but also frauds such as short measure, mislabelling, and other forms of sharp practice.3 A.H. Hassall, Food and its adulterations: comprising reports of the Analytical Sanitary Commission of `The

Lancet’ for the years 1851-1854 (1855), p. 320.4 See http://www.eufoodtrace.org/index.php.5 By traceability we mean the ‘ability to trace the history, application or location of an entity by

means of recorded information’ (ISO standard 8402: 1994).6 Alessandro Stanziani (ed.), La qualité des produits en France ( Paris, 2003); Idem., ‘La fraude dans

l'agro-alimentaire. Genèse historique: La falsification du vin en France 1880-1905’, Revue d’Histoire

Moderne et Contemporaine, L 2 (2003), pp. 154-186; P.J. Atkins, ‘ White poison: the health

consequences of milk consumption’, Social History of Medicine 5 (1992), pp. 207-27.7 The years of highest July-September temperatures were 1857, 1859, 1865, 1868, 1884, 1895,

1898-99, 1906, 1911, and 1914.8 P.J. Atkins, ‘ The growth of London's railway milk trade, c. 1845-1914’, Journal of Transport History

new series, 4 (1978), pp. 208-26.9 D. Taylor, ‘The English dairy industry, 1860-1930’, Economic History Review 2nd series, 29

(1976), pp. 585-601; idem ., ‘Growth and structural change in the English dairy industry, c.1860-

1930’, Agricultural History Review 35 (1987), pp. 47-64.10 Atkins, op. cit. (1978).11 X. de Planhol, An historical geography of France (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 353-59; M. Phlipponneau,

‘Les laitiers-nourrisseurs de la banlieu parisienne’, Bulletin de l’ Association de Géographes Français 198

(1949), pp. 9-18; idem ., ‘La vie rural de la banlieu parisienne’, Centre d’Études Économiques, Études et Mémoires 32 (1956).12 P.J. Atkins, ‘ The intra-urban milk supply of London, circa 1790-1914’, Transactions of the Institute of

British Geographers new series, 2 (1977), pp. 383-99; A. Gaubeaux, Nouveau rapport sur les vacheries du

Département de la Seine (1887), p. 6. The Parisian cowkeepers were subjected to triple monitoring

by the inspectors of registered premises, the inspectors of foodstuffs, and the veterinary medical

service. This last was present in all Départements. In spite of this regulation, in May 1887 there

were still 490 cow-keepers and 6,850 milch cows in the city.





27

31 BPP, Report from the Select Committee on Food Products Adulteration , 1894 (253), XII, 1; 1895 (363), X,

73; 1896 (288), IX, 483; BPP, Report of Departmental Committee to Inquire into the Desirability of Regulations,

under Section 4 of the Sale of Food and Drugs Act, 1899, for Milk and Cream , 1901 (Cd 484, 491), XXX,

371.32 P. Budin, Commission municipale d’étude de l’alimentation par le lait, rapport general (1897).33 Anon., op cit. (1903), pp. 769-907.34 ibid., p. 793.35 ibid., and: ‘Société de médecine publique, séance du 22 avril 1901’, in J. Ogier and F. Bordas,

‘Dangers que présente pour la santé publique la vente du lait écrémé’, Recueil des Travaux du Comité

Consultatif d’Hygiène 31 (1901), pp. 25-36.36

Ibid., pp. 794-95.37 ibid .38 ibid .39 ibid., pp. 796-97.40 The 1901 regulations in Britain did define skimmed milk as having total solids of 9.0 per cent

or over.41 Anon, op cit . (1903), pp. 769-907.42 ibid , 793-95.43 Deuxième Congrès International pour la Répression des Fraudes Alimentaires et Pharmaceutiques, Paris,

1909 (1910).44 La Laiterie et les Industries de la Ferme 19, 21, pp. 162-63.45 Comité Consultatif d’Hygiène Publique, Recueil des Travaux du Comité Consultatif d’Hygiène

Publique de France et des Actes Officiels de l’Administr ation Sanitaire 20 (1881), pp. 107-8.46 Revue d’Hygiène et de Police Sanitaire (1882), pp. 590-2; The Analyst 7 (1882), p. 186.47 See in particular Anon., op cit. (1903), pp. 769-907.

48 Cited in M. Robin, ‘La santé des vaches laitières et la production du lait à Paris’, Revue d’Hygiène

et de Police Sanitaire (1891), pp. 587-600.49 Prior to this the police used lactometers for testing and often poured milk into the gutter if it

appeared to be adulterated. J.A. Wanklyn, Milk-analysis: a practical treatise (1874), p. 9.50 C. Girard, ‘Le commerce de lait à Paris’, Revue d’Hygiène et de Police Sanitaire (1889), pp. 316-319.51 One of the best-known writers on adulteration, A.W. Blyth, based his 1876 Dictionary of hygiene

and public health on Ambroise- Auguste Tardieu’s three volume Dictionnaire d’hygiène publique (1852-54).52

Food & Sanitation (10 February, 1894), p. 47.

http://www.copac.ac.uk/copac/wzgw?id=4089352&field=cau&terms=Congr%E8s+international+pour+la+r%E9pression+des+fraudes+alimentaires+et+pharmaceutiques

http://www.copac.ac.uk/copac/wzgw?id=4089352&field=cau&terms=Congr%E8s+international+pour+la+r%E9pression+des+fraudes+alimentaires+et+pharmaceutiques



28

53 Food & Sanitation (27 January, 1894), p. 2554 For more on the battles between Somerset House and professional analysts, see M. French

and J. Phillips, Cheated not poisoned? Food regulation in the United Kingdom, 1875-1938 (2000), pp. 40-

45.55 Food & Sanitation (12 May, 1894).56 Food & Sanitation (26 May, 1894), p. 161.57 Food & Sanitation (21 July, 1894), p. 226.58 M. Bouffet and T. Tissier, ‘Vente de laits écrémés’, Recueil des Travaux du Comité Consultatif

d’Hygiène 31 (1901), pp. 19-24.59 ibid. 60

Ogier and Bordas, op. cit., pp. 25-36.61 ibid. 62 Bacon and Cassels, op. cit ., p. 629.63 Dubuc, op. cit ., p. 266.64 For more detail see French and Phillips, op. cit .; J. Phillips and M. French, ‘Adulteration and

food law, 1899-1939’, Twentieth Century British History 9 (1998), pp. 350-69; idem ., ‘State regulation and

the hazards of milk, 1900-1939’, Social History of Medicine 12 (1999), pp. 371-88.65 Food & Sanitation (17 February, 1894), p. 56. 66 National Archives: MH/80/5. MacFadden to Newsholme, 28 April 1914, ‘Control of milk

adulteration. Manchester system’. 67 Food & Sanitation (26 October, 1895), p. 324.68 National Archives: MAF 52/10, File A/22021/1911. E.G. Haygarth-Brown, 20 November

1911, ‘Memorandum on the law relating to the sale of milk’. 69 J. Liverseege, Adulteration and analysis of food and drugs (1932), pp. 40, 58, 197. For details of

Hunt v. Richardson, see: King’s Bench 2 (1916), pp. 446-75, Law Times 115 (1916), pp. 114-24, and

Times Law Reports 32 (1916), pp. 560-69; for Grigg v. Smith: Times Law Reports 33 (1917), pp. 541-

42, and Law Times 117 (1917), pp. 477-79.70 National Archives: MH 56/110.71 J.H. Maggs, ‘The organization of United Dairies (Ltd)’, in L.A. Rogers and K.D. Lenoir (eds)

Proceedings of the World’s Dairy Congress, Washington DC, October 2, 3, Philadelphia PA, October 4,

Syracuse NY, October 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 1923 (Washington DC, 1924), Volume I, p. 241; B. Davies, The

nation’s milk supply: its hygienic production and control (1933).



29

72 L.B. Bacon and J.M. Cassals, ‘The milk supply of Paris, Rome and Berlin’, Quarterly Journal of

Economics 51 (1937), pp. 626-648.73 W.H. Fraser, The coming of the mass market, 1850-1914 (1981); G. Shaw, ‘The evolution and

impact of large-scale retailing in Britain’, in J. Benson and G. Shaw (eds) The evolution of retail

systems, c. 1800-1914 (1992), pp. 135-165; J. Benson and G. Shaw (eds) The retailing industry.

Volume 2: the coming of the mass market 1800-1945 (1999).74 A. Jenkins, Drinka Pinta: the story of milk and the industry that serves it (1970).75 Bacon and Cassals, op cit ., pp. 629-630.76 For a commentary on nutritionally inadequate processed foods and their consequences for

health, see J.C. Drummond and A. Wilbraham, The Englishman’s food: a history of five centuries of the

British diet (1959), Chapter 22; but note the corrective discussion, based on careful scholarship, inD.J. Oddy, From plain fare to fusion food: British diet from the 1890s to the 1990s (2003), Chapters 3 and

6.77 M. Dupuis, Nature’s perfect food (2002).78 P.J. Atkins, ‘Early experiments with school milk in Britain, 1900-34’, forthcoming (2005).79 Bacon and Cassels, op. cit ., p. 629.

80 P.J. Atkins, ‘Milk consumption and tuberculosis in Britain, 1850-1950’, in A. Fenton (ed.), Order

and disorder: the health implications of eating and drinking in the nineteenth and twentieth Centuries (2000), pp.

83-95.81 P.J. Atkins, ‘The pasteurization of England: the science, culture and health implications of

milk processing, 1900-1950’, in D. Smith and J. Phillips (eds), Food, science, policy and regulation in the

twentieth century: international and comparative perspectives (2000), pp. 37-51.

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