Catalogue description Department of Scientific and Industrial Research: Food Investigation Board

A Cold Storage Research Board was set up by the department in November 1917 to organise and control research into problems of preserving food products by cold storage and other means. In April 1918 it was renamed the Food Investigation Board. In June 1921 a committee of the board was established as a committee of management for the Low Temperature Research Station, which was set up at Cambridge in 1922 and maintained a programme of research on problems basic to the preservation, storage and transport of perishable foodstuffs. With the assistance of the Empire Marketing Board the station was later enlarged and supplemented by the Ditton Laboratory at East Malling, set up in 1928, and, after the Second World War, two small branch laboratories at Covent Garden and Smithfield markets. The Low Temperature Research Station was concerned mainly with meat, eggs and poultry, and the Ditton Laboratory with fruit and vegetables. In 1931 the Torry Research Station was founded at Aberdeen with the help of the Empire Marketing Board, to study how best to improve the preservation of fish; from 1952 it maintained a branch, the Humber Laboratory, at Hull.

When fully developed the organisation consisted of a headquarters at Cambridge and four main divisions situated at the six laboratories: a General Division for biochemistry and biophysics at the Low Temperature Research Station; a Meat and Meat Products Division at the Low Temperature Research Station and the Smithfield Laboratory; a Fish and Fish Products Division at the Torry Research Station and the Humber Laboratory; and a Fruit and Vegetables Division at the Ditton Laboratory and Covent Garden Laboratory. The organisation was responsible for the investigation of problems of maintaining and preserving quality, eliminating wastage and reducing cost.

In 1958 the organisation was dissolved and, in 1959, its laboratories were transferred to the Agricultural Research Council, with the exception of the Torry Research Station and the Humber Laboratory, for which a small steering committee was appointed. In 1959 the Torry Research Station took over from the National Chemical Laboratory the National Collection of Industrial Bacteria. On the dissolution of the department in 1965 the station passed to the control of the Ministry of Technology; it was later transferred to the Department of Trade and Industry in 1970 and the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food in 1972.