MILK

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 237, 30 June 1908, Page 3

MILK

.-INTERESTINGPHASES DISCUSSED.

LECTURE. BY DR. MASON. Dr. Mason, Chief Health Officer of the Dominion, addressed an atodience in the Concort ' Chamber of tho Town Hall last evening, on the over-interesting subject of milk. Beginning with tho assertion -that there was no food more susceptible to bad treatment than milk, and there was no'food'that got more of it, ho' proceeded to describe milk's composition and sources of injury. Milk, he said, contained over 84 per cent, of water, and only 121 per cent, of cream and other solids. Recently, the legal standard jof cream in -New Zealand was 3 per cent;, butit had been raised to 3.25 per cent., and objections had been raised against that change! Ho proposed, therefore, to show by . lantern slides, some micro-photographs, of milk samples, taken by tho Aylesbury Dairy Company, which supplied a largo . part of London's milk ■ supply. Out ,of 127,000 samples examined, not one shov/ed less than 8.7 per . cent, of cream. So when people in New Zealand said they could not produce milk with ' over 2£ per cent of cream, the answer to theon was: "Try to'drop farming, and go in for something you know something about." There was a. London dairyman of whom the Magistrate asked: "Can you account for tho excess of water in tho milk?" "No," replied the defendant, "except that there has /been a great, deal of rain 'lately, and my cows .are'very thin-skinned." (Laughter.) The oxcuses made; by some New Zealanders against the- cream standard were, in his opinion, similarly "thin." Dr. Mason thon talked .about tho contamination of .milk — its nature/'its sources, and. its prevention. Milk was often left to stand on the footpaths near the railway stations, and 'was thus, subject to contamination,. because (it was complained) tho municipality did not provide a cold store. The butchers and bakers, however, did not make the same complaint, but provided their own accommodation when required.. The.milkmen seemed to have been bo long allowed to follow their practices that thoy felt they had what the lawyers called a ' right of user over the footpaths. They were 'ike the old lady who had kept a . borrowed lance-fan so 16ng that she felt quite aggrieved when" tho lawful ownor asked her to return • it. ■ - , • As to the nature of the impurities in milk, Dr. Mason said if they put the sediment <Jf a glass of milk under a magnifying-gla'ss or a microscope, they would find, things thero that'.were dear at fivepence a "quart. If. a cow could bo milked, under aseptic conditions the. milk; would "bo absolutely free, from bacteria j but, \ ill actual practice,'the bacteria were so 'nunierous that bacteriologists' called milk; normally'clean if it contained no more than' 50,000 organisms.. to the cubic centimetre—a centimetre being a measure less ~ than half - an inch each way. ' A man drinking a glass of ordinary milk would thus pour into his stomach like 40,000,000 of these merry little organisms. Some of these were,believed to be beneficial, but it was best to let them do their good work outside of tho _ human body. Contamination came , from- impure water, used in washing vessels, from dirty cows,-, from dust, .from dirty Jugs,,'from dirty surroundings on-tho farm; in the dairy,..and Ml the citizen's house,'.and fromthe air'itself. Dr/MetchnikoS was the discoverer of tho phagocytic theory—the theory-, that the white corpuscles of the ;b!ood fought against injurious organisms when not otherwise engaged. Somo •of the organisms in milk-were not of themselves directly harmful, but.they engaged .the . attention of tho phagocyte's'; while the harm- : ful bacteria eluded, .them. Thus,.-,the bacteria usually.-worked-in, .pairs, v. They were like the, street;ruffians,', one ,of' whom butted tho old man in, the stomach, while the other stole-, his watch. The white corpuscles were the policemen of the-rbody. ■ Dr. Mason referred to tho. awful waste of human life all over the v world, through bad.feeding; chiefly with bad milk. Hp believed the new system of inspection inaugurated by the' Agricultural Department would purify l to, a great extent the sources of suppl.v, and the dangers incidental to distribution could be guarded against by . pur-chasing-milk in glass bottles. \ •An i instance of tho vile contamination to which 'milk was sometimes subject - - came under his.notice'at 10.30: o'clock the other' night..' It was near Thorndon Station. An inquiring individual, had lifted'the lid. of a can of milk, and lefi it, off. The conse- . quence was that the milk—which had come from a herd of' cows that had been treated in the. most careful mannor—one of the best dairies in the Dominion—was exposed : to a storm of rain. _ Worse than'this happened to that particular lot'of milk. 'It . became dangerous to, the lives ofilittle children, to whom dovoted mothers would feed , it. ■It was a positive poison.' In another case reported to himia milk vendor continued to sell milk, although his children were down with scarlet fever for several'weeks, and his customers contracted the disease. It was very desirable that milk should, like meat, , pass all through one portal, so that its purity could bo guaranteed as surely as wo guaranteed the purity of' tho meat and butter that we sent to other countries. He knew that a great many of .the City Councillors were in favour of municipalising tho milk supply, and he hoped that the conference which was-to be held next week would Ibe moro .than a . mere beating of tho air. If not the householder's could still j do much by taking-a close personal interest in the purity of the milk tney bought, and in seeing that., it was kept in such a way that the boot-brush and other things could not fall into it. A series of sTiiles was thrown upon a screen. showing micro-photographs of bacteria • discovered in random . samples ' of \Vater .and in the air .of byres, dairies, streets, houses, , and;, the open fields of the country. There; were also shown diagrams showing - how diseases are spread by milk, and views of the bottling process advocated, similar to that carried on in 'Wellington by the Fresh Food and Ico Company, and at Lower Hutt by the Wyburn Dairy Company. The lecture was well attended, and 1 was exceedingly interesting. It was delivered in connection with tho-City Council's programme, and was presided over by tho Mayor, the Hon. T. W. Hislop.