A PUBLIC . RELATIONS FIRM has sent me a document setting
out the reasons why ice-cream manufac- turers, though they would prefer to use nothing but British dairly products, find themselves com- pelled to use substitutes. Two factors, they argue, make the use of cream impossible—price and availability : the price is excessive, and there is no guarantee of continuity of supply; and in any case, the substitute product made from yegetable fats is inferior neither in quality nor in taste. With all this am prepared to agree; but it is beside the point : my argument was that the substitute—even if it were twice as good and half as expensive—should not be called ice-cream when it is nothing of the kind. To call. it by some other name would no doubt temporarily inconvenience the manufac- turers; but not to the same extent as their appro- priation of the term has inconvenienced the manufacturers of real ice-cream.
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