MUNICIPAL MILK SUPPLY

Press, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22268, 6 December 1937, Page 14

MUNICIPAL MILK SUPPLY

TO THE EDITOR OE THE PRESS. Sir—Unless your correspondents are agreed on the meaning of the word; they use they'll waste your space. My dictionary says that to pasteurise is to sterilise. Mr-Tenton says people who wish to prevent milk from going sour •’usually sterilise, not pasteurise.” What ran he mean? Then he knows ot some discriminating heat which kills, say, the bacillus that causes cholera, but’nobly spares the bacillus that sour; milk. Pasteur heated to at least lw degrees Fahrenheit. "When 1 propose to make heating of milk for sale a criminal offence, Mr Fenton asks what is to become of those -who have to heat milk to prevent 'it from going sour in hot weather. The answer is easythey should keep the milk cold, from their first getting it. The spring bacillus finds it difficult to work in cold weather; in winter, in a cool cellai or unsunned room, milk keeps a long time. . , . It’s this silly Russian idea of suppressing individual action that causes confusion. For many generations good fresh milk has been supplied by individual farmers in Britain and in

New Zealand; and th& consumer has had this protection—if he didn’t like his supply he could change his milkman. This was neither complicated nor expensive; but it worked. Our City Coyncil has inspectors for meat, and it used to take samples of milk to detect any fall below standard quality, and prosecuted when this was found. This also worked, and for all I know is still working. Nature finds no believer in your Russian. It is Nature who puts the souring bacillus into milk, and I've read, I forget where, that this bacillus eats up any foreign germ that gets into his territory and might injure the calf.

Obviously the sellers’ game is to keep the milk cold; and I may remind him that science has provided machines to do it. Why should Christchurch follow poor. benighted Wellington, whose children’s welfare is steadily sacrificed on the altars of ignorance? No doubt Mr Herron is an able man: but I read a summary of his report and it didn't appear to me that he had bestowed a moment's thought upon tho interests of the consumer. We who are consumers ought to have the say. Our position and that of the City Council are admirably defined this morning in “The Press" by your correspondent. “Let Well Enough Alone. -Yours. atc^ Hy HAppY? December 4, 1937.