Foods and Their Adulteration: Origin, Manufacture, and Composition of Food Products; Description of Common Adulterations, Food Standards, and National Food Laws and RegulationsWiley, Harvey Washington
Science
Foods and Their Adulteration: Origin, Manufacture, and Composition of Food Products; Description of Common Adulterations, Food Standards, and National Food Laws and Regulations
Wiley, Harvey Washington
Food; Food adulteration and inspection
The use of gelatine as a food has of late years become very common. The
ease with which it can be made into jellies, the consistence which it
gives to ice-cream and its general utility in the cuisine have made it
deservedly popular. Gelatine is the product of some of the nitrogenous
parts of the animal and should be made only from the edible parts
thereof. It is particularly abundant in the tendinous portions of the
animal and in the tissues about the head, from which a large part of
edible gelatine is made. No portion of the animal which is filthy or
unfit for food should ever enter into the composition of the gelatine.
If the parts from which the gelatine are made are cured previous to
manufacture they should be cured in a perfectly sanitary way, as
carefully as any other part of the meat. There can be no objection to
the use of gelatine made from these sanitary materials in foods of all
kinds.
There is, however, a possibility that some of the gelatines on the
market may be made from materials wholly unfit for food. The food law
forbids the use of animal substances unfit for food either directly
or indirectly. As an illustration of this condition of affairs I may
call attention to the fact that a part of the gelatines sold in the
United States are made from parts of animals slaughtered in South
America. It is not known to the consumer in what conditions these parts
are preserved and transported. They may be possibly packed with the
hide and sent to Belgium or other countries in a filthy, putrid and
abhorrent state and these parts be cut from the hides before they are
sent to the tanneries and converted into gelatine and sold as edible
gelatine. Such a possibility should not exist, and there is no danger
of its existence with high class manufacturers. A part of the horns
is also used for such purposes, which being of an inedible portion
and unfit for food is not admissible, under the law, as a constituent
of edible gelatine. All such materials should be excluded in the
manufacture of such an important product. Further than this, it may be
stated that the line of demarcation between gelatine and glue is not
always as well drawn as it should be, and this is illustrated in the
report that the gelatine and glue are manufactured in the same factory,
and the same conditions of odor and insanitation which adhere to glue
may attach themselves to the gelatine. Such a condition, of course,
would be an exceptional case, but its possibility should be excluded.
Under the food law only those forms of gelatine first described above
can be legally made and sold for use in food.
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