PURE MILK.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVI, Issue 2190, 14 May 1908, Page 2

PURE MILK.

Sir, —Having boon Medical Officer of Health for a city many times larger that .Gisborne is my claim for ■writing to you on this topic. I have iound that although many faults can be discovered in dairies, dirty hands, dirty udders, cans, manure heaps, etc., yet there is a tendency to make the dairyman the scapegoat for polluted and infected milk when actually the damage is done either between the dairy and the consumer’s homo, or, more frequently, still, after til© purchaser receives the milk, and this is the case far more often than pollution in dairies. Small purveyors of milk, who keep milk in their shops, are sometimes to blame for allowing clean milk to be polluted by dust ana flies and the fluff from the dresses of unclean customers in their shops, and in the consumers’ houses there are infinitely more sources of milk infection .than in the dairy. The matter is one of far-reaching importance to the public, chiefly on account of the children. In my official capaciey as Medical Officer of Health (or “City Health Officer,” as you term it in the colonies), I traced far more cases of infant disease to milk carelessly stored and cans, etc., imperfectly rinsed and scalded in private houses than I did to the much-abused dairyman. The dairyman should be made to properly cool the milk, to see that the cows’ udders and the milkers’ hands are clean, and the place where the milking is done also really clean, free from dust formed from manure, the cans, of course, first rinsed with cold water until there is no milky tinge in the water, then either scalded with boiling water or placed over a steam pipe from which steam is coming freely (a very thorough method of sterilisation adopted in some London dairies). No consumptive person should be permitted to deal with the cows in any way. But these things are of no use if the man who takes the milk to the houses allows dust or flies to gain access to it, or if the householder is careless in storing the milk, in open jugs, etc., or, if in shops, dust and flies are allowed to get to the milk. A wellmade meat safe form of container does well for shops, as it does for the home. With regard to tuberculous cows and milk, I think that unless the cows’ udders are diseased, the milk is not tuberculous; and in any case tubercule bacillus can be kilted by heating the milk (not boiling and so killing it), but by placing it in a vessel surrounded by boiling water for 15 minutes. Milk is a living fluid, and boiling kills it, and rends it not only less digestible than raw milk, but- far less nourishing. Part of my official duty was that of analysing, by the usual Babcock centrifugal test, samples of milk taken haphazard twice a week from the carts in the streets by my inspectors. In every case the bottles were sealed in the presence of the seller, and a. second bottle taken (and paid for as the other by the municipality), and given to the seller, who might, if he cared to do so, come and witness the analysing. That was done to secure that a fair proportion of butter fat-, should be iu all milk, and every allowance for seasonal variations being made, the proportion of butter fat demanded was 3 per cent. Since it might- be possible that some lack of good feed and other adverse conditions might reduce a single sample below this standard, as well as affecting the total solids, only a private notice was sent to a dairyman or seller on the first occasion of a sample being below the standard. Prosecutions were never carried out, nor any publicity given by report at Council meetings, unless repeated tests proved systematic Watering of the milk, and before any prosecution was made,.m ease the employee should have been dishonest, a sample was taken from the cans in the dairy before they left in the carts in cases of doubt. The effect of these, methods, combined with the usual printed regulations, proved exceedingly good in reducing infant mortality iu the summer months, and it seems to me that some such proceedings might be useful in Gisborne. Only do not make the dairyman always the scapegoat for the offences of other people.—l am, OtC- ’ GERARD SMITH.