JUNIOR SKEPTIC No. 54 (3232)The Romans knew they were plagued by food fraud. How-
ever, adulteration was an even bigger problem than they
realized. It turns out that many Romans personally added
even more poison to the wine they drank. In those days, people
used toxic lead as a sweetener! Lead is deadly. Unfortunately,
it is also very tasty. It would be many centuries before people
learned that lead is a slow, sweet poison—and even then,
ruthless food fraudsters continued to put lead into food.
Food fraud continued long after the Roman Empire broke
apart. No one was safe from food swindles during the me-
dieval period of knights and castles. In fact, food fraud
was one problem that concerned the rich at
least as much as the poor. Peasants
mostly grew or hunted for their own
food. Rich merchants and nobles could
aford the spices and other luxury foods
that were the most profitable for
swindlers to fake.Medieval Food Laws
Naturally, authorities tried to do
something. Cities and kingdoms passed
laws against food fraud. Cheaters were
punished.
By 1066, for example, the English
town of Chester had outlawed adulter-
ated beer. Guilty brewers were fined or
sentenced to sit in the unpleasant sounding “dung stool.”
Around 200 years later, the king of England banned numer-
ous kinds of food fraud—especially fraud by cheating bread
makers. Townsfolk across the kingdom relied upon the calo-
ries in bread to survive. The king decreed that all bread must
be sold at certain prices and weights based on the price of
grain. Bakers who cheated their customers could be fined.
If their “ofense be grievous and often,” they could be sen-
tenced to stand in a “pillory.” This was a wooden restraining
device with holes for a prisoner’s head and hands. Prisoners
were displayed in the public square, where they were shamed
and often abused by angry townspeople throwing filth or rot-
ten food.
The English king outlawed food measurement scams. He
also banned the sale of “corrupted wine” and meat from
diseased animals. In fact, the law made it a crime for anyone
to sell anyfood or drink that was “not wholesome for man’s
body, or after...they have kept it so long that it loses its
natural wholesomeness.”
Many other countries passed similar laws to combat food
fraud. Unfortunately, these laws were often broken. For
every scammer who was caught and punished, there were
many others who got away with it. Food was inspected toorarely, and the punishments were usually mild. Why would a
baker care about a small fine if they could earn a larger
amount by cheating?Trade Guilds Enforce Standards
Trade guilds also helped to reduce food fraud. During the
medieval period, craftspeople and merchants found it useful
for business to create associations to govern their particular
kind of trade (such as weaving, knife making, or spice sell-
ing). Trade guilds trained their members, set standards for
quality, and sometimes punished members who cheated.
After all, a cheating guild member could damage the whole
guild’s reputation and cost everyone money.
Also, some guilds were granted special pow-
ers and responsibilities by the king. In Eng-
land, for example, the pepperer’s guild was
given the important but funny sounding job
of “garbling.” This came from an Arabic term
meaning “sifting” or “selecting.” Pepper was
very frequently adulterated in medieval
times, just as it was in the Roman Empire.
Garblers fought this fraud by inspecting
spice shipments to make sure that they were
pure.
This worked fairly well for several cen-
turies. The pepperers guild made it harder
to fake luxury foods. This was so useful that
the guild’s responsibilities grew. It eventually
became a new organization called the Grocer’s
Company. The king put the grocers in charge of
inspecting food in general.
This did reduce fraud, but it came at a cost. The grocers
charged as much money as they could for all those food
inspections. Also, they didn’t exactly work for the public.
Putting the food industry in charge of food inspection was a
bit like asking the fox to guard the hen house. There were
many complaints that the inspectors were crooked.
Also, the world was changing. The small kingdom of
England was growing to become the vast British Empire. It
held rich territories all around the world. Fleets of sailing
ships carried goods back and forth from those territories,
making powerful new mega-businesses immensely wealthy.
Those mega-businesses complained to the government that a
medieval system of food inspection was no longer useful or
necessary. They argued that inspections increased costs and
hampered trade. Government leaders worried that they were
right. Trade was making the British Empire into the world’s
most powerful nation. Leaders reasoned that it would be better
for everybody if government got out of the way of business.
Old food laws were canceled, ignored, or forgotten. The
grocers lost their power to inspect food.
So, who wasresponsible for preventing food fraud? For the
most part, no one! What could possibly go wrong?66Medieval Food Swindling