Читать книгу Foods and Their Adulteration - Harvey Washington Wiley - Страница 56

—The principal chemical preservatives used in the curing of meats are borax and boric acid and sulfite of soda. There are many other chemical preservatives which have been employed, but these are by far the most useful, the most certain, and the most widely employed. Borax and boric acid, of the two classes, are by far the more common. Sulfite of soda is used more as a preservative of color, and is probably found more frequently on fresh than on preserved meats. Borax has the property of paralyzing fermentative action and thus securing immunity from decay. Its use, however, tends to diminish the palatability of the meat because of its restraining influence upon the condimental method of preservation described above. The meats are more quickly preserved, require less condimental substances, and the borax probably inhibits, to a certain degree, the enzymic action of a favorable kind, described above.

The use of any kind of a chemical preserving agent on meat is most reprehensible, no matter what they may be. Unfortunately, experts differ respecting the influence of these chemical preservatives upon health. The users of chemical preservatives have employed experts of known fame and distinction to testify in favor of these products, while the consumer, perhaps, is not able to go to the expense of securing expert testimony, and, therefore, as respects numbers of witnesses, at least, chemical preservatives have an advantage. In a case of this kind the accused must be considered guilty until proven innocent. It is not sufficient to prove in a given case that borax is not injurious. If it be proven that it is injurious in a single case conviction must ensue. There is no doubt of the fact that the injurious character of borax, even in small quantities, has been fully established, and therefore any amount of testimony to the effect that in individual cases it has not produced injurious results is of no value whatever. If a citizen be robbed and in the course of the prosecution it be shown that there are a million citizens who have not been robbed by this criminal the evidence would be of no value. If it has been shown that the individual citizen has been robbed the prisoner is convicted. No expert would testify that borax has never been injurious,—even those who appear in its favor admit that, but plead that it is generally used in small quantities, and, therefore, cannot be harmful.