Accum and food adulteration: A forgotten bicentennial

Abstract

In 1820, Frederick Accum published a book, best known by its biblical subtitle ‘Death in the Pot', showing the widespread fraudulent and dangerous adulteration of common foods and drinks bought in London. Despite its brief popularity, there was no effective legislation in Britain until 1875 after more extensive analytical surveys by Hassall and Letheby in 1855 and a parliamentary enquiry had confirmed the frauds and risks to public health. There were similar surveys and legal action against food adulteration in France and Germany towards the end of the 19th century. In the USA, campaigning by Harvey Wiley and others revealed the same risks and frauds and led to the Pure Foods and Drugs Act in 1906 and formation of the FDA. We should have celebrated Accum’s bicentennial in 2020 to recognise his achievement and to remind us of the continuing dangers of food adulteration today.

In 1820, Frederick Accum, a consultant chemical analyst and lecturer in London, published an account of analyses of foods and drinks purchased from ordinary shops.^1–3 His book Treatise on the Adulterations of Food and Culinary Poisons, Exhibiting the Fraudulent Sophistications of Bread, Beer, Wine, Spirituous Liquors, Tea, Coffee, Cream, Confectionery, Vinegar, Mustard, Pepper, Cheese, Olive Oil, Pickles, and Other Articles Employed in Domestic Economy, and Methods of Detecting Them, ³ better known by its biblical subtitle ‘Death in the Pot’ (II Kings 4:40), showed adulteration of the majority of samples of milk, flour, beer, sweets and many other drinks, foods and flavourings. The information cited from his own work and scanty, scattered comments by others amounted to a condemnation of many foods and drinks as dangerous to public health and their suppliers as fraudsters. There is some controversy about how many of the results were the work of Accum, how many came from others interested in the area and how much of the work was driven by Accum’s commercial interests, but the key point is that his publication was the first collected account of just how common was the fraudulent and potentially dangerous adulteration of common foods and drink in Britain.^1–5

There was brief acclaim for Accum in raising public disquiet about fraudulent foodstuffs that were not what the seller claimed them to be and the common use of poisonous substances as colours, flavourings and means to conceal decomposition of foods offered for sale; examples included the use of poisonous lead and arsenical pigments in cakes, pastries, pies and sweets, the seizure-promoting picrotoxin in beer (‘to increase its “intoxicating” power’) and fraudulent watering of most samples of beer and milk. Shortly after publication of ‘Death in the Pot’, Accum fled Britain because of a possibly unrelated legal action^2,6 and despite general interest no public campaign developed then to prevent the sale of dangerous and dishonestly labelled foods.

A few physicians, scientists and politicians in Britain remained concerned, including the campaigning former pugilist, surgeon and coroner Thomas Wakley, who founded the Lancet in 1823 as a vehicle for improving medicine and protecting the public. In the early 1850s, he established an Analytical Sanitary Commission to examine food adulteration. It supported two experts, Drs Arthur Hill Hassall and Henry Letheby, to make a wide survey of foods being sold in London. Their work, ⁴ published in 1855, showed adulteration of 50–100% of common items of the diet, often still with toxic chemicals, covert and fraudulent substitution of cheaper substitutes for tea, coffee and expensive spices and flavourings, and fraudulent dilution of milk and beer with water in almost all their retail purchases. That finally led to an active campaign for laws to ensure the purity and safety of foods. A partial report in 1855 of a Parliamentary Select Committee enquiry into the Adulteration of Food, Drinks and Drugs confirmed the frequency of fraud and the use of dangerous adulterants as in Accum’s time. Subsequent government action eventually resulted in the first effective UK law, the Sale of Foods and Drugs Act 1875, which recognised Official Analysts and included penalties for adulteration and fraud and which supported much further scientific work and regulation to keep consumer protection in line with manufacturers’ changing practices.^7–12

Those activities and publications deal with Britain but what of other countries? There had long been limited concerns about isolated aspects of food identity, fraud and adulteration and their prevention in several European nations, such as France^13–15 and Germany,^16,17 but no systematic attack on these problems and their detection and prevention until the later 19th century, well after Accum’s time.^11,18

In the USA, despite isolated calls for action against widespread proven fraud and adulteration in the later 19th century,^19–21 the first federal law, the Pure Food and Drug Act, was only passed in 1906 after vigorous campaigning by Dr Harvey Wiley, then Chief of the US Department of Agriculture’s Bureau of Chemistry, and others had led to the foundation of the now well-known Food and Drug Administration.^11,18–24

The pioneering studies and publication of Accum 201 years ago and his successors fighting for safe and honest food deserve celebration despite the persistence of the sorts of frauds and dangerous adulteration they recognised so long ago.^25,26