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 ADULTERATION OF FOOD AND PRESERVATION OF HEALTH.

To prevent deception in the sale of dairy products, unwholesome, impure, unhealthy, and adulterated milk, and especially the sale of oleomargarine for butter, has been the subject of recent stringent legislation in many of the states. New York, Ohio, Vermont, Missouri, Arkansas, and Colorado, have sought to suppress and regulate the sale of oleomargarine and other spurious imitations of butter. These laws vary very much in the various states, but in none of them, save in New York, has it been judicially held, that a law absolutely prohibiting the manufacture or the sale of these imitations and compounds was unconstitutional.

In Ohio, the manufacture or sale of any article or compound designed to be sold as butter, and not made entirely of cream or milk, is prohibited. In Vermont, the selling or offering for sale as butter any article or substance not made exclusive of cream or milk is prohibited. In Missouri, innkeepers and boarding-house keepers are required to mark the vessel in which the article compounded is served, conspicuously and legibly with the words "OLEOMARGARINE or IMPURE BUTTER."

The Arkansas statute contains a similar provision, and, in addition, the further requirement, when sales of the article are made the receptacle or package containing it shall be stamped or marked in plain legible type with the name of the contents.

Similar laws are those enacted in Oregon and Colorado. In the latter state, every importer, manufacturer, or vender [sic], is required to obtain a license, for making or for importing shall not be less than $1,000, and for selling not less than $500; besides, a separate license must be had for every city, town, or other place, in which the manufacturermanufacture [sic] or sale is carried on.

The opinion of the Court of Appeals of New York in the recent case of People vs. Marx, declaring that the recent New York statutory enactment prohibiting the manufacture of oleomargarine in that state, unconstitutional and void, has