Sessional_Paper_1898 — Page 625

[ XLVII]

Appendix 13.

No. 18 or 1896.

An Ordinance enacted by the Governor of Hongkong, with the advice and consent of the Legislative Council thereof, to make better provision for the Sale of Food and Drugs in a pure state.

LS

WILLIAM ROBINSON,

Governor.

Titis.

BE

[19th August, 1896.]

E it enacted by the Governor of Hongkong, with the advice and consent of the Legislative

Council thereof, as follows:-

1. This Ordinance may be cited as The Sale of Food and Drugs Ordinance, 1896.

2. The term food, when used in this Ordinance, shall include every food or article used for food or drink by man, other than drugs or water.

The term drug, when used in this Ordinance, shall include medicine for internal or external use.

3. Any person who shall mix, colour, stain, or powder, or order or permit any other person to mix, colour, stain, or powder, any article of food with any ingredient or material so as to render the article injurious to health, with intent that the same may be sold in that state, and any person who shall sell any such article so mixed, coloured, stained, or powdered, shall be liable in every case, upon summary conviction before a Magistrate, to a fine not exceeding the sum of five hundred dollars and in default of payment of the said fine to imprisonment for a period not exceeding six months with or without hard labour.

4. Any person who shall mix, colour, stain, or powder, or order or permit any other persou to mix, colour, stain, or powder, any drug with any ingredient or material so as to affect injuriously the quality or potency of such drug, with intent that the same may be sold in that state, and any person who shall sell any such drug so mixed, coloured, stained, or powdered, shall be liable in every case to the same punishment as prescribed in the preceding section of this Ordinance.

5. Provided that no person shall be liable to be convicted under either of the two last foregoing sections of this Ordinance in respect of the sale of any article of food, or of any drug, if he shows to the satisfaction of the Magistrate before whom he is charged that he did not know of the article of food or drug sold by him being so mixed, coloured, stained, or powdered as in either of those sections mentioned, and that he could not with reasonable diligence have obtained that knowledge.

6. Any person who shall sell to the prejudice of the purchaser any article of food or any drug which is not of the nature, substance, or quality of the article demanded by such purchaser, shall be liable in every case, upon summary conviction before a Magistrate, to a fine not exceeding two hundred dollars and in default of payment of the said fine to imprisonment for a period not exceeding three months with or without hard labour; provided that an offence shall not be deemed to be committed under this section in the following cases; that is to suty:----

(1) Where any matter or ingredient not injurious to health has been added to the food or drug because the same is required for the production or preparation thereof as an article of commerce, in a state fit for carriage or consumption, and not fraudulently to increase the bulk, weight, or measure of the food or drug, or conceal the inferior quality thereof;

(2) Where the drug or food is a proprietary medicine, or is the subject of a patent in force, and is supplied in the state required by the specification of the patent;

(3) Where the food or drug is unavoidably mixed with some extraneous matter in

the process of collection or preparation..

Short titla

Interpretation

of words. (38 & 39 Vic. <. €3, s. 2)

Prohibition against the mixture of food with injurious ingredienta and again-t selling when

Bo mixed (Ibid, e. 3.)

Frohibition against the mixing of injurious ingredients with oruga and against selling tho mixture.

(Ibich, s. 4.)

Exemption In ease of proof <f absence of knowledge. (Ibid, s. 5.)

Prohibition against the sale of articles of food and druga not of the proper nature, substance, or quality.

(Ibiel, s. 6.)