MILK IN SCHOOLS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 23175, 22 October 1938, Page 15

MILK IN SCHOOLS

POSITION AT TUAKAU: PASTEURISATION QUESTION EXPLANATION BY OFFICIAL Reasons why the Health Department had submitted alternative schemes to school committees in country districts where pasteurised milk was not available for children were given by an official of the Auckland Milk in Schools Committee yesterday. His statement was made when he was informed that the Tuakau school committee had expressed surprise that, as the town was the centro of a large dairying district and possessed two butter factories, the Health Department should suggest that dried milk might be used for supplying milk to children at the school, owing to the fact that there was no pasteurising plant in the district for providing pasteurised milk.

At a meeting of the committee, Mr. A. Harker, asked what was the objection to ordinary fresh milk. "We seem to have survived quite well on the fresh milk we have already drunk," he said. The chairman, Mr. W. Pyatt, said the regulations seemed illogical. If the pasteurisation of milk was so essential for schoolchildren, why did not the department insist on it for adults too? Mr. Pyatt said he believed that the East Tamaki dairy factory had a teurising plant. He could not see that there would be any difficulty about sending crates of pasteurised milk from there to Tuakau by a morning train. The official of the Milk in Schools Committee said yesterday that ever since the national scheme for the supply of milk to children had been started the Health Department had insisted that the milk provided should bo pasteurised. Through distance from pasteurising plants a number of country schools were unable to secure such milk, and it was with a view to assisting them that the Health Department had, in the case of the Auckland district, approached the Auckland committee to find out the cost of supplying milk from the city to various centres between Kaukapakapa in the north and Kimihia in the south.

The Auckland committee had supplied these charges, together "with transport costs at both ends, and to these the Health Department had added intervening rail cost. In the case of Tuakau as with a number of other centres, the department had apparently considered the total charges too high, the official added. It was therefore offering the school committees concerned alternative schemes under ■which dried malted milk or fresh milk for cocoa-making ■would be supplied. In some districts schools were already receiving dried milk.

Elsewhere it was stated that there was a pasteurising plant for cream, but not for milk, at East Tamaki. That factory supplied milk for distribution to schools, but it was first pasteurised at a city plant.