The City's Milk Supply.

Press, Volume LXIII, Issue 19154, 10 November 1927, Page 10

The City's Milk Supply.

The long discussion on Monday night by the City Council did not, it is encouraging to note, bring a municipal milk supply much nearer than it is now. Even the Labour members of the Council, though they all favour municipalisation in theory, do not all believe that they can get it, and there are signs that one or two are not desperately anxious to get it. Monday night's discussion was indeed chiefly remarkable for the line it drew between those who believe that they "have to go forward" and those who have been long enough in public life to know the meaning of "practical "politics." At the same time the Council has expressed the opinion that "the time is now opportune for the "institution of a municipal milk "supply," and we must not assume that it will never go further. The position, in spite of the Council's present impotence, is quite serious from two points of view. There is the fact, to begin with, that socialisation is always a piecemeal business, in theory as well as in practice. People are persuaded to try a little of it, and then a little more, and a little more, until they forget where it began, and that life was quite possible and pleasant before they had ever heard of it. And there is the further fact that milk is one of those commodities which lend themselves to panic legislation. The public are so easily stampeded on questions of health ,and disease that the unthinking have almost now accepted the Labour Party's suggestion that privately supplied milk is neither clean nor pure. It is of course a monstrous suggestion, which is supported neither by the experience of Christchurch for half a century nor by the report of the examination made some months ago by the Government Analyst; but the thoughtless forget these things, and the fanatical do not wish to remember them. It is sufficient to say that 453 people died from using contaminated milk privately supplied on the other side of the world to persuade some people that it is dangerous to drink privately supplied milk here. But the milk supplied to Christchurch is not contaminated, so far as the Health Department or any other authority knows, and it is for the advocates of municipalisation to show what special reason there is to suppose that it is about to become a menace to health. Everybody knows that municipalisation would be a blunder economically, but we are asked to believe that it is necessary hygienically, and the reason has to be found at the other end of the earth.