Los Banos Rotary Club History
Drug Inspector Tells Of Work

The protection that is furnished the people of California from unscrupulous manufacturers and sellers of impure, adulterated and worthless drugs and foods was explained to members of the Rotary Club Tuesday noon by J. R. Dieffenbacher, senior food and drug inspector for the State Department of Public Health.

Declaring that the pure food law goes back in history to the story of Adam and Eve and the forbidden apple. Dieffenbacher pointed out that the first pure food and drinklaw in California law was passed at the first session of the state legislature in 1850, and pure or adulterated foods and liquors be subject to a $500 fine.

Today's pure drugs and food law closely follows the Natinal Food and Drug Act, and provides service throughout the state to guarantee the purity and advertised value of products offered for sale.

Dieffenbacherrelated numerous of his personal experiences in apprehending the varied offenders, and advised his listeners of quack practices and products that are continually sold to an unsuspecting public. He particularly warned against the fly-by-night peddler who sells his cure-all, do-all wares from door to door to a highly gullible public that accepts his assurances and fast sales talk without question. He told of a copper wrist band sold at a fancy price as a sure cure for arthritis, of high-frequency electric gadgets "guaranteed" to cure everything from rheumatism to tuberculosis and heart disease; and of fancy wood cabinets with neon-lighted dials that smoothtalking quacks blightly assure his victims will not only analyze every type of disease but will miraculously prescribe the proper pill as the correct remedy.

He also told of the department's work in inspecting and laboratory checking of canned and packaged goods, meats, etc. and told numerous instances where the department had found and condemned foods which were found unfit for public consumption. Among them was a Los Angeles incident where an ambitious meat packing concern sold around horsemeat as fancy ground steak.

The speaker was introduced by program chairman C. W. Bates.

June 15, 1951

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