THE MILK TESTING QUESTION.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1202, 15 March 1895, Page 8

THE MILK TESTING QUESTION.

TO THE EDITOR. g lß) —The complaints repeatedly made about the unsatisfactory results of milk testing as carried out in this district are not without foundation. There should not be any difference between the result obtained at the creamery and that obtained at, the, factory. From the account of the system of testing given in your last issue, it would appear that there is gross mismanagement on the part of the factory managers, perhaps through ignorance. If ".'through ignorance,' what, may I asli, are the paid experts doing, that the managers are not properly instructed in their , duties ? Io ought not to be left for an .outsider to show how things should; be done. Tests should be made weekly,^but the test should be made with an average sample of the milk from each supplier, and should moreover be made at the factory by some person possessing the requisite knowledge of how to do it, and the honesty to use that knowledge impartially. Milk can be kept perfectly fluid, without any separation of fat, for at least a month, so that there is not the ! least. difficulty in getting an average sample of the weekly supply. In the best Australian factories the following plan is pursued. A number of pint wine bottles equal to the number of suppliers is sent to each creamery. In each bottle there has been placed about ten grains of bichromate of potash. The corked bottles are taken charge of by the manager of the who tips round th© neck of cftcli * bottle a tin label, with a number stamped on it. This number is then entered in his book* opposite-the name of each supplier. When the milk is well mixed in the weighing vat, he takes out with a dipper sufficient to fill about one-seventh of the bottle, gives it a shake just enough to „ ■ m j x it with the.bichromate, and puts it away in liis.private room. This is done with the milk from each supplier. The same is done each morning,' so that at the end of the week the creamery manager possesses a good average sample of the weekly supply from each producer. All that is necessary to be done is to well mix the milk newly put into the bottle with the sample already: in it. The rest, the sending in the bottles to the factory, washing them, returning them, and fixing the day on which the supply from each creamery would be tested, are matters of detail that anyone who is not a fool can arrange. Not to carry out the testing in the manner It have indicated raises a suspicion of gross ignorance or of incompetence on the part of those in charge.— Yours truly, Charles Hulke.