MELBOURNE’S MILK SUPPLY.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVI, 14 June 1926, Page 10

MELBOURNE’S MILK SUPPLY.

EXAMPLE OF WELLINGTON TO BE FOLLOWED. News has been received in Wellington of the adoption by the Melbourne City Council of the report and recommendations made by Mr R. E. Herron, general manager of the Wellington City milk department, during his visit some weeks ago to Melbourne, in response . to a request that he should advise that City Council as to an improved milk supply. A . ~ The health committee of the Melbourne Council some little time ago Signified its full approval of the suggestions made by Mr Herron for municipal control of milk'for the city area, but its report was referred • back to the full City Council. It/was again sent forward on May 24, when the chairman of the health committee (Alderinaii Stepley) moved a resolution recommending that tile principles outlined in such report be adopted by the council as a working basis, and that the committee be authorised .to approach the Government for the purpose of ascertaining whether it would be prepared to introduce the necessary legislation to enable the council to undertake and carry out a system of municipal milk supply for the city, and to report further to the council in due course regarding the details of the scheme. It was very evident that the present system of “policing” milk vendors was not likely to improve the standard of milk, said Mr Staplev. The system operating in Wellington, by which every consignment was tested, had proved vastly superior to other municipal methods of supervision. Other cities of the world were going in for pasteurisation, but before pasteurisation was adopted, every precaution should be taken to keep the milk as pure its possible. Under ..the existing system in Melbourne room was. left for “manipulating” milk by the addition of skimmed milk or the removing of butter-fat.' In Wellington the milk was delivered in bottles direct to the consumer. The idea of the resolution was to give the committee authority to approach the Government. Nothing more was intended at this stage. The onus would be thrown upon the Government. The proposal was one of the most important from a health point of view that had been before the council. If put into effect lie thought it was going to have far-reaching results beneficial to the citizens, and especially to the infant life of the city. The capital cost of the scheme (states The Age) is estimated at £160,000, and provides for the inauguration of a system very much on the lines of the Web lington system—delivery, on the block system, of pasteurised milk in bottles, licensing of dairies, compensation for the 120 distributors in the city at present, etc. The prices proposed are bn a par with Wellington’s prices, summer and winter. As Greater Melbourne comprises something over 20 different boroughs, the scheme cannot be made general over the metropolitan area at the commencement, but the City Council feels that if it is successful in the city area it will expand almost of its own accord to the surrounding boroughs. “It is resolved,” states The Age, in concluding its editorial comment on the decision of the council, “that the Her ron scheme shall be given a genuine trial in an area which embraces congested districts, in which dwell thousands of workers’ families to whom the advent of a thoroughly reliable and pure milk supply will be an inestimable boon.”