24 JULY 1941, Page 13

PATENT MEDICINES AND JAM

SIR,—YOU refer in your Notes to the Pharmacy and Medicines Bill, which provides for the disclosure of the ingredients of patent and other medicines on general sale. Lord Woolton has just announced that, notwithstanding an increase in the price of jam, the fruit content of the new season's jam will be less than usual. Should not the labels on the jam jars, following the rule laid down in the Pharmacy Bill, disclose the contents by intimating the precise quantity of fruit per lb., also the nature and weight of the other ingredients? The public are entitled to know what they are buying, whether it be patent medicine or jam. In the past the word "jam" has been largely used as a camouflage for a preponderance of fruit-substitutes.-