For the up-to-date dairyman has discovered how to adulterate the milk at
the other end of the cow. He has found that by giving her certain food in
excess he can make her produce an abnormally large quantity of milk which
lacks the right proportion of cream and other constituents of genuine
milk. It has more than once been ruled by a bench of magistrates, and more
recently in the High Court, that all is not milk that comes from the cow,
and that a customer who asks for "milk" is entitled to get something with
certain definite characteristics.
Even in cases where there would be no such escape from the results of the
analyst's certificate, the ingenious adulterator is by no means at the end
of his tether, but has numerous dodges upon which to fall back.
One of the best known of these is the "notice dodge," examples of which
must frequently have been seen by everyone.
A notice, often in very small type, is put up to the effect that the
seller will not guarantee that the goods he sells are genuine. Then when
he is summoned for selling, say, adulterated milk, he produces his notice
and claims that that indemnifies him.
A very amusing instance of this notice dodge being carried to its logical
conclusion was witnessed in Merionethshire a few years ago, when the Chief
Constable of the district reported that all the shopkeepers had put up
notices stating that "All goods sold here are adulterated."
A similar deadlock occurred, in 1903, in Buckinghamshire, and there the
County Council forbade such notices being exhibited, though it is doubtful
whether it was within its legal rights in so doing.
The plausible excuses put forward by the perverted ingenuity of the
adulterator to escape conviction are innumerable. Mistake on the part of
the seller, warranty with goods obtained from abroad, and the shop-boy as
scapegoat are among the most common forms of defence.
The extent to which a legal quibble may be carried reached its limit
perhaps in a prosecution that occurred a few years ago. In a certain
village there was only one shop, and that was a co-operative store, of
which the whole of the villagers were members. A county inspector bought
"pure" coffee at this shop, and on analysis the coffee was found to
contain 90 per cent. of chicory, and eventually the manager of the store
was fined.
For the defence, it was urged that the villagers were themselves both
shopkeepers and purchasers, and, therefore, could not be prejudiced by the
sale of adulterated goods. The inspector, however, was not a member of the
co-operative store, and on this ground the prosecution was successful.
But if one of the villagers had bought the coffee, it is doubtful whether
any fine could have legally been inflicted, for it would have been a case
of co-operative adulteration.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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