MODERN METHODS

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 51, 7 September 1928, Page 8

MODERN METHODS

TREATMENT OF MILK

MEDICAL JOURNAL-COMMENT

■A recent issue of the British Medical Journal comments very ■ favourably upon the cleanliness and efficiency of modern methods of treating milk, as exemplified in one of the great London milk depots. The interesting point about this article is that in the essential features the methods followed in the London depot' are to be- adopted very closely in the new Wellington. depot. ' j The article is as follows:—' The opening of what is claimed to b» the largest and most modern wholesale milk depot in the world, that of the London Wholesale Dairies, Limited, at Yauxhall, was celebrated by a luncheon on Cth July, presided over by the Hon. Sir Arthur Stanley, and attended by; the Mayors of Lambeth and Beptford and by a number of London medical j officers of health, one of . whom, Dr. Charles Porter, of Marylebone, spoke to the principal toast. . . The guests were taken round this remarkable . building, and were impressed by the absolute cleanliness and efficiency of the handling—an unfortunate word, because the process is a rather extreme example of mechanisation —of the thousands of, gallons of milk which pass every day through this depot on its way from. the farmer to the retail dairyman. The visitors wero taken to the pasteurising floor, where the milk is heated to 145 deg. F., and held at that temperature for . thirty minutes. In the bottle and churn room they watched the filling process, which takes place entirely by machinory, and is so arranged that the filling - begins the moment the sterilisation of.the vessels is completed. In tho sterilising room tho milk was shown being sterilised in the hottle under pressure.. An interesting f eaturo of the plant is the huge glass-lined holding tanks, which have no crevices or corners, and thus lend themselves to easy cleansing; also the 'homogenisers,' machines which exert a pressure of 30001b to the square inch and break up tho fat cells in the milk so that the cream does not separate and a uniform product in the finished sterilised milk is ensured. It was statied that samples of milk aro takeu for laboratory control every -half-hour throughout the entire process.. The visitors also noted the provision, of baths and washrooms for tho employees, and the excellent lighting and ventilation ;of a modern hygienic factory. "Homogenisers" are not to be installed in tho Wellington factory. After having been accustomed for several years to tho very . pleasing "cream line," well down the neck of- the bottle, ■Wellington housewives would probably—certainly, in fact—want to know where tho cream had gone to were these machines installed and tho cream globules so broken up and intimately mixed with the milk that they would not rise to the top again. Scientific tests and proofs aro well enough for tho expert, but to the average housewife seeing is believing, and it tho cream does not show at tho top or. the bottlo then where is it?