PURER MILK WANTED.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXVI, Issue 14170, 19 September 1906, Page 7

PURER MILK WANTED.

DR MASON’S SCHEME OF MUNICIPAL DISTRIBUTION. [From Our Correspondent.] WELLINGTON, September 18. The subject of .the community’s milk supply receives considerable attention in the Health Department’s annual report, prepared by Dr Mason, Chief Health Officer, who appears as a strong advocate, for health reasons, of State or municipally-controlled milk distribu-j tion. It is a case of more care being taken with products intended for oversea than for home consumption, for Dr Mason states that in his criticism he does not include milk ■which leaves the colony either as butter or cheese, because the system of grading initiated by Mr Kinsella, Chief Dairy Commissioner, assures in a very great measure the real goodness of butter and cheese which is exported. Dr Mason states that tho unsavoury state of many small milking byres, ignorance or want of care on the part of many milkers, combined with the occasional ill-treatment of the milk by the carrier or distributor, . results not infrequently in transforming an ideal food for children into a veritable agent for ill-health and death. Large measures of reform are required in the direction of mechanical milkers, hygienic pails, up-to-date byres, and even with these assured great deterioration often occurred in consequence of the manner of transit from dairyman to retailer. The uncertain responsibility in regard to this feature which exists between the Agricultural and Health Departments and tho local authorities has prevented any sustained and effective control. Dr Mason fixes some of the blarrw? for impure milk upon the consumer. He says; “ One baa only to take his walks abroad before tho shutters are down, eo to speak, and see the heterogeneous kind of reoeptable set outside the respectable ratepayer’s door into which tho milkman is required to dump. the pint or quart, and it is easy bo realise that oven if the milk had escaped all the previous perils, it has many more to meet. Wide*-mouthed, open jugs, tin billies, with here and there only a .properly constructed vessel, adorn the doorsteps or window sills. Granted that careful inspection has secured the cleanliness of the milk till the sleepy distributor has measured it out into the vessel, what dirt and dust may not be swept into it'as it waits exposed to the wind-swept streets? The whole system wants rearranging. It must first be clearly laid down who is responsible for the sanitation of the cow, the byre, the carriers, and the distributors. Tho present uncertain responsibility as to flip control must bo settled. _ There should be no difficulty in deciding this, short of requiring the Health Department to control the whole cycle, from the cow to the consumer, that is, of milk consumed by/ our own people. The Agricultural Department might be made responsible fox’ its purity until it is put upon the train, and this Department should have absolute control from that point.” SUGGESTED MUNICIPAL DISTRIBUTION. Dr Mason urges that a fair trial should bo given to his suggestion that all milk entering a town of over 4000 inhabitants should bo delivered at a municipal pasteurising factory, where it should bo carefully assayed, pasteurised and delivered by officers of tire borough. Farmers’ interests oould be safeguarded as they are at the butter factory, and, by reason of the bulk, the municipality could distribute milk cheaper and with greater certainty than the ordinary retailer. It would bo sent out in properly sealed bottles, thus .ensuring cleanliness, , despite the distributors’ carelessness and the buyers’ apathy. The value of a pure milk supply, says Dr Mason, cannot be overesteemea in ite influence upon infantile mortality. Last year infantile diarrhoea, enteritis and marasmus carried off 038 of our children under one year. These events are in many instances only synonyms for impure milk and bad feeding. Anticipating; that hi® scheme will be objected to as another instalment of State Socialism, Dr Mason concludes —“ A colony which owns railway!, telephones ana coal mines, which carries on successfully a far-reaching system of life and (ire insurance, which has passed an old age pension scheme (the admiration of all who have taken the trouble to carefully consider it), needs no justification for extending the same care which it exercises over those who have home the brunt and stress of life to those who are just beginning. We may, or we may not, bo able to legislate so as to influence tho birth-rate, hut assuredly w© can do much to lessen the yearly toll which .impure milk and improper feeding exaot from those just entering upon their citizenship.”