THE CABINET: Pure Food & Drugs

THE CABINET

Alert, employes of the Department of Agriculture scent after those scamps, the adulterers of food and drug products, rejoice to waylay those who tamper with comestibles or medicaments. In this sense, last week, Acting Secretary Charles Frederick Marvin was pleased to expose his judgments upon 50 violations of the Food and Drugs Act. Walnuts, 29 bags, were condemned because they contained “filthy, decomposed and putrid animal substance.” An Oklahoma shipment of eggs showed “71.1% inedible eggs, consisting of black rots, mixed rots, spot rots, blood rings and moldy eggs.” There was no potency in “Womanette . . . emphatically the Woman’s Friend, there being no condition to which the peculiarities of her sex render her liable in which this medicine may not be taken with every assurance that it will prove beneficial”; nor to “Bowman’s Abortion Remedy.”

Thus protected from such scalawaggishness, the prudent housekeeper studied another pamphlet issued, in this case, by Secretary Jardine himself. It gave exact definitions of various kinds of meats and meat products, among others:

Brawn is the product made from chopped or ground and cooked edible parts of swine, chiefly from the head, feet, and/or legs, with or without the chopped or ground tongue.

Head cheese, mock brawn, differs from brawn in that other meat and/or meat by-products are substituted, in whole or in part, for corresponding parts derived from swine.

Souse is the product consisting of meat and/or meat byproducts; after cooking, the mixture is commonly packed into containers and covered with vinegar.

Scrapple is the product consisting of meat and/or meat byproducts mixed with meal or the flour of grain, and cooked with seasoning materials, after which it is poured into a mold.