Report of Wisconsin Dairy and Food Commissioner  39


much so that I felt it necessary for my official guidance in the matter
to invoke the official opinion of the Attorney General, which I did
in the following communication dated July 23, 1923:
"I am confronted with an intricate matter Involving the question of
my official duties concerning which I need and request your official
opinion and advice, involving points of law and also relevant evidence.
"By the terms of Chapter 333 of the laws of 1923, the first paragraph
of Section 4601g of the statutes is repealed. This means, that the
SPECIFIC law forbidding the sale for use or consumption in this state
of flour that has been artificially bleached, has been repealed.
"At a hearing on this bill by the Senate Committee on State Affairs,
while the bill was yet pending in the Senate, my assistant, Mr. Harry
Kleuter, at my request, informed that committee that in our opinion,
If the repealing bill passed the Legislature and became a law, then the
GENERAL law relating to the adulteration of foods, namely Section
4600 and 4601, as well as the GENERAL law relating to the misbranding
of articles of food, namely Section 4601aa, would become applicable to
the sale, etc., in this state of artificially bleached flour or artificially
'matured' (so-called) flour, so that through this committee, the Legis-
lature was Informed as to our view of what the result would be if the
foregoing statute were repealed.
"The SPECIFIC law prohibiting the sale in this state for use and
consumption therein of artificially bleached flour having been repealed,
the question now is, am I correct in assuming as Dairy and Food Com-
missioner, that the sales of artificially bleached flour or so-called
'matured' flour, like the sale of all other kinds of foods, are amenable
to the terms of the general food law and the general misbranding law?
"The Legislature of Wisconsin, in subsection 12 of Section 4601-4a
Statutes, has defined and standardized the unmodified term flour, de-
claring the same to be the legal definition and standard for that article
of food In all prosecutions arising under the provisions of these stat-
utes relating to the manufacture or sale of adulterated, misbranded or
otherwise unlawful articles of food, employing in said definition the
term 'meal' and 'grain,' which terms are also defined by the Legis-
lature, namely:
"'Grain is the fully matured, clean, sound, air-dry seed of wheat,
maize, rice, oats, rye, buckwheat, barley sorghum, millet or spelt.'
"'Meal Is the clean, sound product made by grinding grain.'
"'FLOUTR is the fine, clean, sound product made by bolting wheat
meal and contains not more than thirteen and one-half (13.5) per cent
of moisture, not less than one and twenty-five hundredths (1.25) per
cent of nitrogen, not more than one (1) per cent of ash, and not more
than fifty hundredths (0.50) per cent of fibre.'
"In the case, McCarthy vs. State of Wisconsin, the Supreme Court of
Wisconsin, by Chief Justice Winslow, held that, 'The enactment of
the pure food law (secs. 4600 et seq., Stats.) was in the lawful exercise
of the police power,' and further in that opinion stated: 'It is entirely
competent for the Legislature to provide its own definition of a word
used in a law which it enacts, and when it does so that definition must
necessarily control regardless of dictionary definitions.'
"The process described in the definition quoted for the production
of FLOUR is a MECHANICAL process in which no CHEMICAL TREAT-
MENT is sanctioned or recognized, but flour that has been artificially
bleached or artificially 'matured' (so-called) is an article that has been
CHEMICALLY treated.
"In view of the Legislative definition of flour and the decision of
the
Wisconsin Supreme Court above quoted, is it or is it not correct to
assume that an article of food to be lawfully recognized as FLOUR
must be produced in the manner described by the statute and be pos-