AGAIN THE MILK

Evening Post, Volume XCI, Issue 127, 30 May 1916, Page 6

AGAIN THE MILK

While the dairy-farmers and milkretailers are at' loggerheads about prices, numbers of the consumers have the same old complaint as to the quality of the fluid when it reaches them. The controversy about the quotations per gallon is a perennial affair, finality is not in sight. While the milk-trade thus has its differences, even as lawyers, doctors, and other folk have, the people of Wellington see the milk muddle in all its long-established ugliness. They can think back on years of promises of Teform—promises that go back beyond half a century—and the performance is i not yet, though .the City Council does seem at last to be on the eve of business. They have observed, that fines have not checked " milk-miring" orj " faking." Evidently the return from the water added by some unscrupulous vendors is large enough to pay fines and leave a substantial profit. This trick ■with the milk has been practised for more than fifty years, and still it goes on, and other adulteration also continues. Medical men, nurses, and others who have'seen the evil effects of inferior manipulated, milk have protested from one year k another, but local bodies and Governments and Parliaments have not been stirred, remarkably. Now and then and Labour Council adds its voice to the chorus of condemnation, but as no great kick follows the formal resolution the milk-trade is not perturbed. Time proves more and more that people, who will not bestir themselves sufficiently to protect th<ar children against contaminated, faked, or watered milk, must be saved from their own1 dangerous "carelessness, thoughtlessness, or laziness. The fining process has failed ignominiously. We repeat our belief that on clear evidence ■of guilt (a second offence) the punishment should be imprisonment and cancellation of license. Fraud with the milk is one of the meanest kinds of sneak-thieving, for it hits hardest the poor, especially any delicate children in struggling households or hospitals. It is the kind of crime that should excite a public indignation which i ■would bring in a radical reform quickly, but the people havo apparently become more or less indifferent to this kind of theft. Culprits, when caught and convicted, should be taught that • the mean j conversion of a food (which should be wholesome) into a perilous mixture is a degrading crime, which the community will.not tolerate,