DISEASE FROM MILK

Southland Times, Issue 23646, 22 October 1938, Page 20

DISEASE FROM MILK

SPREAD OF TUBERCULOSIS Experiments at the National • Institute for Research in Dairying (University of Reading), and the Rowett Research Institute, Aberdeen, into the nutritive food value of raw and pasteurized milk, indicate that there is little difference. The reports state that in all of the numerous experiments made “the growth curves of the two groups of calves were almost exactly superimposable, although there was a slight, but still insignificant, difference in favour of raw milk in certain body measurements.” The important results of these tests, however, are embodied in the records of tuberculin tests applied to all calves which completed the experiment at about six months of age. Taking the result of the three experiments together, 17 out of 37 calves in the raw milk group (46 per cent.), and 5 out of 38 in the pasteurized milk group (13 per cent.), gave a positive tuberculin test. While this shows the disastrous extent to which bovine tuberculosis can be spread among young animals, and presumably children also, through the medium of raw milk, it also indicates the preventive measure, pasteurization, which can be used to control the spread of the disease. It provides a strong argument for the pasteurization of all skim-milk fed to calves, pigs and even poultry.