SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 29, 1908. A MUDDLE IN MILK. Will it Ever be Straightened Out?

Free Lance, Volume VIII, Issue 400, 29 February 1908, Page 6

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 29, 1908. A MUDDLE IN MILK. Will it Ever be Straightened Out?

SHALL we ever have pure milk ? The question seems too. absurd to ask m Wellington with our remarkable advances in every department of commerce and life. Yet it seems as though the problem of a pure and satisfactory milk supply is just as far off as ever. The City Council are vi against the problem of their lives over the matter. Their specially-ap-pointed Committee, which was set up to grapple with the question, tinkered around it, and at last laid a report about babies' bottles, the length of feeding tubes, or some such matters, upon the table of the Council. Then the matter was referred back to th<* Committee. « • • As regards the City Council, the ie ilk difficulty has happened into a kimd of circumlocution office, which Charles Dickens immo.rtalised as the place whence no problem ever issued satisfactorily. They have, during the past week, raised the question, of the possibility of controlling milk-testing depots. The indications so far point to the fact that the Council regard the idea as too impossible. As a matter cf fact, they have only succeeded in putting up a record for very indifferent and desultory discussion on the subject so far. And they appear to have found that hard work. • • • Meanwhile the sediment remains in the bottom of the domestic milk-jug. The quart of lacteal fluid is more than lacteal fluid. It contains wonders which lie revealed even to the naked eye. Get a microscope on the work of inspection, and the consumer is appalled, so that many people in Wellington have sworn off milk for ever and a day. The problem is beaten from pillar to post. Just now the Government are taking a hand in the game. They have issued a long list of regulations in the "Gazette," and the position to-day is ) epresented by a crest made up of a milky ground, somewhat tainted, and a milkman rampant . • • The regulations are not nearly so mew as they look at first sight. We have seen them before, but they have been got up in a new dress this time. They have the merit of humour, and it is conspicuous merit when one considers that the subject is the serious one of the public health and life. Take regulation No. 5, for instance It demands that "no person shall use for the carriage of milk any cart used for the carting of manure or any substance likely to cause injury to milk." No. 11 warns the milkman that on no

account must a bedroom bo used as a milk-shop or milk-stor&; and' No. 13 cautions the supplier of the alleged milk that no> cesspool must be within any dairy, or any room used as a milkstore or milk-shop.

All necessary enough, but how faaoical in view of the subject! And now, in spite of all the discussion, in ■the face of all the regulations, just look in your milk-jugs in. the morning and you will still find filth and fevei germs, dirt and disease. All because the authorities will not bestir themselves to say "a pure supply is possible ; it is absolutely necessary, and w must have it!"