The Milk Inspector's Surprise
A state food inspector goes undercover at Seattle restaurants to find that almost no one is serving actual milk—and that some are using embalming fluid to keep it 'fresh'.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
There are a lot of sore restaurant men this morning. It appears that Saturday the state food inspector visited the city, accompanied by a deputy. The two men started in early in the morning and visited every restaurant in the central part of the city until the closing hours came on Sunday evening. At each place, a piece of pie and a glass of milk was purchased. The milk was poured into a bottle and the pie left untasted. Once submitted to a chemist, the results were made public. Twenty-one restaurants were visited and only three of them furnished milk containing three per cent fat, as required by law. In one instance the milk was found to contain only 0.35 per cent fat. In seven of the restaurants, formaldehyde was used to preserve the milk. For the purpose of preserving dead bodies, formaldehyde is good, but the food inspector says that when used to preserve milk, it is likely to have a bad effect on the person who consumes the fluid. State Food Commissioner McDonald will not prosecute for the first offense, but he gives all the restaurants fair warning that he will come again.
“For the purpose of preserving dead bodies, formaldehyde is good, but the food inspector says that when used to preserve milk it is likely to have a bad effect.”
This early 20th-century food safety scandal foreshadows the eventual creation of robust public health regulations. The discovery of formaldehyde in milk highlights how, before rigorous inspection, businesses often prioritized profit over basic public health.
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