MILK PASTEURISATION

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26228, 12 August 1946, Page 2

MILK PASTEURISATION

Sir, —There has been much talk lately of a pasteurisation plant in Dunedin. Why all this expense and delay in delivering milk to the customer? The Incidence of tuberculosis is higher in the big towns in England, where the milk is already pasteurised, than in the country, where it is usually taken raw. It is insufficient milk and other protective foods which induce the liability to tuberculosis and other evils of malnutrition. The lactic acid bacteria in milk, which are beneficient and which attack disease organisms, are killed by heat, so that after pasteurisation milk is a perfect breeding ground for any contamination that may reach it after delivery to the customer, and compulsory pasteurisation would produce more evils than it would cure. The only way to get safe milk is to have clean milk from healthy cows. Compulsory pasteurisation would have the effect of eliminating the producers who do not sell contaminated milk, and would leave untouched the dirty producers. What is the good of dairy farmers having a licence to sell milk if the inspectors do not see to it that the cows are healthy and that the milk is sent out clean? Are our cows so unhealthy that we cannot get good milk? If so, the only way to get healthy cows is by having fertile soil and good pastures for dairy farming. The soil will only remain fertile as long as farmers observe the " rule of return,” which is the essence of farming. Fertility can be maintained only by faithfully returning to the soil everything that came from it, not by doping it with lifeless chemical fertilisers.—l am, etc., Roxburgh, August 6. H. W. B.