These days food safety, nutrition, food and protein security are inextricably linked. An estimated 600 million – 1 in 10 people in the world – fall ill after eating contaminated food and over 125,000 children die from food borne disease every year. Many of these problems are caused by illegal adulteration of food and drink. And Hull’s own Joseph James Forrester ( 27 May 1809 – 12 May 1861) played a significant role in early attempts to regulate food and drinks doing so with Port wine.
The Assize of Bread (1266) is regarded as being the earliest attempts at legislative control of food and drink standards; regulating the price, weight and quality of bread and beer. Measures had been developed for weight but taste – and adulteration – were a tough nut to crack. The guild system across Europe played an increasingly active role in controls as a means to protect livelihoods – standards to protect the consumer were a long way off.
As the industrial revolution and rapid urbanisation crowded towns and cities, the demand for food and drink soared – so too all manner of adulteration. The list of additives reads like the contents of a chemistry set: strychnine, cocculus inculus (both are hallucinogens) and copperas in rum and beer; sulphate of copper in pickles, bottled fruit, wine, and preserves; lead chromate in mustard and snuff; sulphate of iron in tea and beer; ferric ferrocynanide, lime sulphate, and turmeric in chinese tea; copper carbonate, lead sulphate, bisulphate of mercury, and Venetian lead in sugar confectionery and chocolate; lead in wine and cider. Red lead gave Gloucester cheese its 'healthy' red hue, flour and arrowroot a rich thickness to cream, and tea leaves were 'dried, dyed, and recycled again to be sold as new as the tea weakened.
As late as 1877 the Local Government Board found that approximately a quarter of the milk it examined contained excessive water, or chalk, and ten per cent of all the butter, over eight per cent of the bread, and 50 per cent of the gin had copper in them to heighten the colour. It became clear, however, to the Government of the day that Britain’s growing reputation for adulterated food threatened its export market. This was the wake-up call for Government to act. The Sale of Food and Drugs Act 1875 followed which established important principles and became the foundation of modern food law.
Joseph James Forrester came to Food and Drink standards in a curious way. Born in Hull in 1809, he moved to Oporto in Portugal where he joined his uncle James – a partner in Offley, Forrester and Weber a notable Port wine Merchanting company operating to this day. Quickly, Joseph set about mapping the Douro, with a view to the improvement of its navigation to help improve the Port wine industry publishing a remarkable map of the Douro river from Vilvestre on the Spanish frontier to its mouth at St. João da Foz (Oporto) in 1848. There was a separate map of the port wine district (Alto-Douro) showing the prominent wine farms (quintas). Published in 1843 and reprinted in 1852 by order of a select committee at the House of Commons.
Why the fuss? In 1844 Forrester had published a pamphlet on the wine trade, entitled ‘A Word or two on Port Wine,’ anonymously. Eight editions sold like hot cakes as readers delighted in the exposure of malpractice across an industry using corrupt practices to grow the trade. This lead to an invitation to the select committee from which a regulation of this most English of drinks took shape.
He continued to write on this and other practical subjects, publishing tracts on the vine disease, improved manufacture of olive oil and was awarded at the Universal Exhibition in Paris in 1855 the silver medal for his work on standards. He was named Baron de Forrester for life by Ferdinand II of Portugal in 1855. Forrester was also made knight commander of the orders of Christ and Isabella la Catolica, and received the cross of chevalier of various orders of his adopted country. He was member of the Royal Academies of Lisbon and Oporto, of the Royal Academy of Sciences of Turin, of the English Society of Antiquaries, of the Royal Geographical Societies of London, Paris, and Berlin, and received the highest gold medals reserved for learned foreigners by the pope and by the emperors of Russia, Austria, and France.
Joseph James Forrester was a trail blazer in evidence based standards for food and drink way before legislation in England caught up with the need.
