The sanitary surveillance of industrial production of foodstuff in blocked Leningrad (1941–1943)

The article covers, on the basis of archival documents, one of the little-studied aspects of the Leningrad Blockade the activities of the State Sanitary Inspectorate for supervision over output of food products at industrial enterprises of the city (19411943). The data on its structure, personnel, under controlled network of enterprises, methods of work are presented. The specificity of functioning of the State Sanitary Inspection in conditions of Blockade was autonomy from the Republican and the Union management of the sanitary service. All decisions were taken from local daily needs and in contact with city authorities. One of the main tasks of sanitary food physicians in the blockaded city was to search for substitutes of food products and as much as possible to preserve and to use defective food products and at the same time to prevent surge of gastrointestinal diseases. With the purposes of that, workers of the State Sanitary Inspectorate carried on regular laboratory tests of food samples, authorized using in production certain surrogates and participated in development of the Temporary Technical Specifications for production of industrial enterprises. The study demonstrated that methods of work of the Leningrad State Sanitary Inspectorate (team approach to examinations, day-and-night duties of physicians in city and districts sanitary inspections, regular meetings with superiors and senior inspectors of food groups and economic executives) justified themselves in conditions of Blockade and deficiency of food resources.