SAFE MILK SUPPLY

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 91, 18 April 1931, Page 9

SAFE MILK SUPPLY

MATTER OF URGENCY

PREVENTION OF DISEASE

V CERTAIN ROAD

(From "The Post's" Representative.) LONDON, 6th March. In a speech at Croyilon, Mr. Arthur Greenwood, Minister of Health, referred to an outbreak of paratyphoid in Essex. "We had a few hundred cases," he said, "and several deaths, but we Lave got it down to the farm where it originated. It originated in a farm worker there, and infection appears to have spread through the milk produced at that farm. "That is a lesson we ought to take to heart. It seems utterly futile for the community to spend its hundreds of thousands of pounds on institutions that treat disease which common-sense should prevent." Mr. Greenwood described the deaths that had occurred in Essex as "murder." "Until we get a pure supply of milk," he said, "you may take it. that wo are acquiescing day by day in the murder of honest citizens and children. " -A series of letters on the subject of the pasteurisation of milk has been appearing in "The Times." First of all, there was a protest from the West Biding farmers, against Lord Moynihan's recent remarks in the House of Lords on impurities in milk. Dr. P. G. Varrier-.Tones, medical director of Papworth village settlement for ex-service men suffering from tuberculosis, replied to this. "It is (he says) common knowledge that tuberculosis of the glands, bones, and joints, especially among children, is caused by the drinking of milk contaminated by living bovine tubercle bacilli, and that these can be killed by_ means of proper pasteurisation or boiling. "The Medical Officer of Health of the London County Council states, that, in 1929, of 208-1 samples of milk subjected to biological examination, 158, of 71 per cent., ware found to contain tubercle 'bacilli. If this percentage is true of London's estimated daily supply of 350,000 gallons, then London alone is taking 4,000,000 gallons of infected milk every year. "In face of this possibility, is there any doubt that we are creating thousands of cripples simply because we allow living tubercle bacilli to bo sold in our milk supply? Lord Mayor Treloar's Home at Alton is full of children crippled by tuberculosis of bovine origin. We admire the work done there, and elsewhere, in correcting the results of our folly, but why not put an end to the folly itself? x REMEDY WITH THE PUBLIC. "It is often extremely difficult to detect the presence of diseased animals. Farmers are not necessarily bacteriologists, and it would not be fair to place upon them the onus of guaranteeing the purity of the milk they supply. Besides, it is unnecessary. The remedy is in the hands of the public. If none but boiled, or properly pasteurised, milk is drunk, then infection by the bovine tubercle bacillus' will cease. If, on the contrary, the public prefer to go on in the belief that milk 'straight from the cow' is necessarily free from infection, then we shall continue the manufacture of cripples among our nearest and dearest, at considerable cost in money and in. anguish." Dr. Stonhouse Williams writes in support of Taw milk that "the ivork of those who arc studying the nutritional value of milk shows that it is by no means easy to replace satisfactorily those constituents which have been altered by its treatment." Professor Henry Kenwood, Emeritus Professor of Hygiene and Public Health in the University of London, says:— "Dr. Stenhouso Williams's statement suggests that material alterations have resulted from heating which need to be rectified', yet this is disputed by the highest authorities, and its accuracy lacks the support 'of human experience. It is conceded that a little fruit juice should be given to the infant to correct the reduction in vitamin C; but that is an easy matter which has become a fairly general practice; and so I conclude that it is the reductions in the available calcium and phosphorus content when milk is heated that are referred to. But -where is there any evidence that a child, fed upon heated, milk is more likely to suffer from a deficiency of calcium and phosphorus than one fed upon raw milk, and is it not a fact that cow's milk, even when boiled, contains more of both of these elements than the breast-milk provided by Nature to meet the needs of the human infant? "But proper pasteurisation is to be preferred to the boiling of milk, because, in pasteurisation, the temperature is not raised above 148dcg Fahrenheit —otherwise the cream line is affected; whereas in boiling the temperature must be raised to about 212deg Fahrenheit. Owing to the much lower temperature of pasteurisation the Tihysieal characters of the milk (including the taste) are practically unchanged as compared with boiled milk, while the safety from harmful germs is as groat as if it w?re boiled or obtained from tested herds. Pasteurisation is no alternative to cleanliness, as some have suggested it may be, for dirt robs pasteurisation of its best results, and so trade interests demand that clean milk shall bo dealt with." BACTERIOLOGIST'S VIEWS. ' It remained for Dr. J. |C. G. Ledingham, Chief Bacteriologist of the Lister Institute, to provide the final argument in favour of pasteurisation. In a letter to "The Times" to-day he says:— "Tho gain from pasteurising (or boiling) tho milk is tho assurance that not only tubercle bacilli but other germs pathogenic to man that may be present in the milk are destroyed. Of these other germs, some such as typhoid and paratyphoid bacilli, diphtheria bacilli, and streptococci, which may cause widespread epidemics of some throat, gain access to the milk usually from carriers or, maybe, sick persons employed in the farm or dairy, while others, such as the germs of contagious abortion of cattle which can cause undulant fever in man, are, like tubercle bacilli, excreted directly into, the milk from diseased udders. "I wish to emphasise these points because it is highly desirable that every milk consumer should realise lh:| no milk can be regarded as really safe which has not been pasteurised or boiled. Laudable efforts, which should at all costs be continued, have been made to render milk what is euphemistically called "pure" or "clean" by strict attention to hygienic principles during its collection and distribution. Wo have also available brands of raw milk with the official designations of "certified" and Grade A (T.T.). These two brands, coining us they do from tubercle-free herds, may be reasonably supposed to be free from tubercle bacilli, but they cannot bo regarded ax 'safe' in the wider sense. The only officially designated milks that may bo regarded as safe are Grade A (pasteurised) and pasteurised milk. "The production of so-called 'pure' and 'clean' milk with relatively low bacterial content is very desirable on aesthetic grounds, but it must not be forgotten that safe milks an.- not ncces-

sarily the cleanest, and that the proscribed bacterial standards for designated milks have no bearing whatever on bhc quostion of safety, it. is important, therefore, to make 'clean' milk safe by pasteurising it. "Statements to the effect that milk treated by heat is of inferior nutritive value may bo safely ignored inasmuch as the evidence on which such .statements rest is mostly valueless on critical examination."