MILK AND CLEANLINESS.

Taranaki Daily News, 8 March 1924, Page 15

MILK AND CLEANLINESS.

ESSENTIAL PRECAUTIONS. Dr. R. M. Buchanan, city bacteriologist of Glasgow, in the course of a lecture, showed how farmers and dairymen could improve the quality of their milk by the observation of scrupulous cleanliness in everything connected with its production. Milk was a food of Nature’s own, providing for children and. young animals. In no two dissimilar mammals does the milk yield the same analysis, as its composition is adapted for the needs of the young. An infant doubles its weight days, a calf in 47 days, a lamb in 15 days, and a rabbit in six days. Compared with human milk, rabbit’s milk contains 20 per cent, less water, 14 per cent, more proteins, and seven per cent, more fat. Of all foods milk is the most liable to contamination, whether from the cow’s udder, the hands of the milker, the utensils, the dust of the air, or in the house of the consumer. It was a common belief that milk was clean if there were no visible signs of dirt, but this was not so. Cleanliness had a wider significance. Though to the eye the milk seemed clean, it might be contaminated by bacteria, and this point was illustrated by a large number of slides showing bacteria and bacilli of various shapes and sizes. If milk could be collected clean from the cow, it could be preserved indefinitely; but that was a practical impossibility no matter how much care might be taken. Her© slides were put on the screen to show on a highly magnified scale how much dust and germs were sticking to the hairs on a cow’s udder, though to the eye it appeared clean. Dr. Buchanan went on to show the difference in cleanliness, bacteriologieally, of milk from cows under different treatment. In a cow groomed before milking there were 295 bacteria per cubic centimetre; in a cow not groomed but the udder rubbed by a dry, clean cloth and the fore milk rejected, there were 635; in a cow with which no precautions were taken there were 230,500, but when the same cow had her udder rubbed -with a wet cloth the number was reduced to 10,140. This shows that even the simplest precautions grately improve the cleanliness of milk. * Another table showed the natural increase to be expected in the bacteria found in the milk when kept for various periods. A newly milked sample, tested as soon as it reached the laboratory, contained 98,000 bacteria; after five hours, 284,000; and next day, after twenty-four hours, 11,000.000 The methods of destroying or preventing the growth of bacteria, cooling and pasteurisation, were next discussed. and the lecturer suggested that each county should organise a clean milk competition to show what could be done, by the use of intelligent labour, to stimulate the production of clean milk. Without intelligent efficiency, which above all ensured the purity of the milk, the most up-to-date buildings and expensive appliances would be of no avail.