WORSE THAN HE STATED

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 121, 25 May 1931, Page 9

WORSE THAN HE STATED

ENGLAND'S MILK SUPPLY

A PEER'S INDICTMENT

(From "Tho Port's" Representative.) LONDON, 26th March. In the House of Lords recently Lord Moynihau made some damaging remarks regarding tho country's milk supply. Speaking at Leeds this week, he said the position was more grave than he had at first indicated. He had no quarrel with the farmer, except that the milk ho produced was so often contaminated. Iv this country there were, roughly, 1,000,000 farms, and of those only 400 produced grade "A" tubercle-free milk. The remainder produced grade "A" milk, in which he had no confidence whatever. He regarded all milk as falling into two categories only, that which was free from tubercle and that which was not. There were only 152 licences in this country for the sale of certified milk, and only 188 for the sale of grade "A" tuberclefree milk. At a minimum estimate, 40 per cent, of the cows in this country suffered from tuberoulosis. Of the cows slaughtered in London 33 per cent, were found to be affected with tubercle, and in Edinburgh the figure was 42 per cent. Not only so, but 31.5 per cent, of tuberculosis in children under the age of 15 and 57 per cent, of the cases of enlarged tubercular glands had been proved to be due to the drinking of contaminated milk. Experiments proved that children had their weight increased, not by 3.851b, which was the normal increase in the period during which they were under observation, but by 6.981b, and their height increased by 2.64Jn, instead of 1.84. Medical men had never disputed that milk was the best of all natural foods. The people of this country did not drink nearly enough of it. We drank only half as much a head of the population as did the people of Canada, one-third as much as the Americans, and one-sixth as much as the people in the Scandinavian countries. But milk ought to be the pure, unadulterated product of the cow, ancl it so seldom was. Had anyone ever seen a clean cow? Contamination was rife. The result was that milk produced, to a degree that few people outside the ranks of the medical profession realised, a number of diseases. It produced a form of tuberculosis, diseases of the intestines, of the glands, joints, and bones. In 1928 it produced in London an epidemic of 400 cases, in Northampton 95 cases, in Bedford 72 cases, and in the Boundhay district of Leeds S3 cases. One hundred people died every day from tuberculosis. Medical men desired" that everyone in the country should be able to have milk, provided that the supply was pure.