Bottled Raw Milk Supply; Request To City Plants

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29744, 10 February 1962, Page 13

Bottled Raw Milk Supply; Request To City Plants

A recent approach by the Christchurch Metropolitan Milk Board to two city milk companies to see whether a supply of bottled raw milk could be made available has drawn a negative answer from the one and the need for a more comprehensive report on - the matter from the other.

The chairman of the milk board (Mr G. D. Hattaway) told members that the approach had been made in answer to the application by a small number of consumers to the board for a supply of raw milk.

He said the companies were advised that certain applicants had suggested that a bottled raw milk supply could perhaps be made available by placing a standing order with a vendor for delivery on certain week-days, ora alternatively of purchasing direct from the treatment station.

It was also pointed out to the companies, said Mr Hattaway, that no right existed at present to demand a supply of other than pasteurised milk, but If an agreed and practicable solution to the request was possible then the board was willing to give any such proposals full consideration. "Public Concern”

Replies from the two companies concerned, which originally were listed on the board's agenda to be taken in committee were, at the reouest of Mr W. E. Olds and with the assent of members put into open meeting as being "a matter of public concern.”

The letter from the Christchurch Milk Company. Ltd advised that its board of directors had called for a comprehensive report on al! aspects of the matter and that until this had been studied it could not comment further on the matter. The other company concerned, Wrights Metropolitan Milk Company, Ltd., said that supplying raw milk from Its treatment station would mean reverting to the standards of testing and hygiene that were acceptable 30 year* ago ‘‘The modern treatment station maintains up-to-date laboratories and takes painstaking care that the product we supply is of the highest quality and free from any contamination,” says the company.

The pasteurised milk issued Ly the station was tested

daily and it was fully guaranteed as complying with all the Health Department standards before consumers received it. ‘This, of course, would be an impossibility with raw milk, and as the Health Department holds the treatment station responsible if raw milk fails to comply with the reductase test they would prosecute us,” the letter said. Undulant Fever

The company also explained in its letter to the milk board that there was always with raw milk the oossibility of brucellosis infection resulting In undulant fever to the consumer, as happened recently at Ashburton. The board’s request, it added, placed the company in an invidious position. “We are definitely agains' bottling raw milk through our plant used for pasteurised milk and if it was neces*ary the raw milk would have to be bottled last In midafternoon for fear of coloform contamination of our pasteurised supply" Before anything further Is done, the board will wait for the other milk company’s replv, said Mr Hattaway. If certain formalities required by the departments of Health and Agriculture are met with and found to be in order, then a licence is likely to be issued “in due time" to a milk producer who has applied to the board since its last meeting to sell raw milk at his premises.