One of the books I picked up in the library sale was Thought For Food by Nathan Goldenberg, a study of the post war development of Marks & Spencers food department, in which he played an important part as a food scientist
The first surprise for me was that M&S had been in food even before WWII, but that “by the mid 50s the food range had dwindled down to a range of long life slab cakes, pound cakes & swiss rolls; biscuits, confectionery, a small range of canned foods & fresh fruit” while the business concentrated on clothing
“He was not an easy man & was never afraid to stand his ground on matters of principle. He was, however, always constructive“, in the words of Sir Derek Rayner in the preface.
“In my early days at M&S I was surprised to find how little importance was given to the taste & flavour of the foods produced by some manufacturers & especially so at the end of the shelf life of the project” and “The idea that foods of high quality cannot be produced in dirty factories under unhygienic conditions was also accepted only gradually” give some idea of what Goldenberg himself found in “my early & rather difficult years at M&S”
Some rather hair raising stories help to explain why friends of mine, who are in the food hygiene business, seem paranoid about the state of their fridge etc
The story of faecal streptococci found in tinned ham after suppliers in Holland & Denmark had both been asked by the US army in Europe to reduce heat treatment (time & temp) in order to diminish the amount of jelly & fat
Or how it was discovered that any bacteria on the hands of a production line operative could get on to wet warm cans of peas & then be drawn through the very small space between the lid & the can itself by the force of the vacuum developing in the air space in the can as it cooled
How mould spore could be drawn in to plastic drink bottles by static charge, until the conveyor belt was altered so bottles did not rub together
It is salutary that measures we take for granted now took time to develop & be accepted as standard
1 Use of the right raw materials for each product
2 Good processing standards to ensure consistent quality
3 Good packaging standards
4 High standards of hygienic food handling & factory sanitation
5 Foods both clean & fresh, and good to eat
6 Shelf life & sell buy dates to ensure foods are fresh when eaten by the consumer
7 Cold chain techniques for handling high risk foods
8 Working with suppliers whose management supports these principles
9 Suppliers to employ technologists, laboratories & hygiene officers
In the 1970s, as M&S moved in to chilled foods in a big way (especially chilled, rather than frozen, chickens) I rather resented the over-scrupulous attention to sell by dates – or at least the policy that led to them carrying only small stock levels to ensure that they were not left with unsaleable goods on their hands
This meant that you really needed to get into an M&S store before about 11am to have a real chance of getting what you wanted
And I felt doubly miffed during the Winter of Discontent of 1978/79 when Time magazine carried pictures of empty supermarket shelves in Britain
I do not remember food shortages being a problem that year – in contrast to what happened during the miners’ strikes or the Great Sugar Shortage
And anyway, the shelves were clearly Marks & Spencers, so it was just a normal afternoon
Nowadays I suppose I fret more about the large amounts of unsold stock you can see being removed from M&S shelves towards the end of the day
But Time magazine went down in my esteem in 1979
