Dear Sir.

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 11, Issue 32, 23 May 1947, Page 4

Dear Sir.

THE MILK SUPPLY

Letters' to the Editor must be clearly written on one side of the paper only and where a nom-de-plume is used the name of the writer must be included for reference purposes. The Editor reserves the right to abridge, amend or withhold any letter or letters.

Sir,—The outburst by Mr Sullivan, M.P., at the last Borough Council meeting, re the town milk supply “as the worst ever” just goes to show how little he knows about what he would have us believe he knows. Firstly he owes an apology to the farmers who supply this, so-called chalky substance on which he himself has grown so big.

Now Mr Sullivan I have been handling this perishable food daily for the past 20 years, and I have learnt what I know about it from experience, not from what the big boy with the smelling salts jar who roamed the town one day last week had to tell me. You mentioned in your outburst that the pasteurised milk was the previous day’s, yes so it is, and so was the raw milk which the town has had for the last 15 years. The day has long gone by when the farmer rose at 1 a.m. to have his herd milked by 4 a.m. for that day’s supply. Yes the- previous 1 day’s milk did on two or three occasions in the last four years have to be replaced before midday, and that Mr Sullivan was raw milk, no pasteurising in those days. You also mentioned the low standard of the present supply. Sir if you ever uttered an untruthful statement you certainly did when you made that. The standard of the milk supply in-this town will today, as it always did compare with any in New Zealand. Visitors to this district from Wellington and Auckland have remarked to me not once but hundreds of times “Thank you for the beautiful milk. It is half cream, you should see what we have to put up with in the City.”

Now Sir, what is wrong with the 3000 people in the Borough and Ohope that they have not reported this low standard to the Health De-partment-yes, the Health Department take samples regularly and in 20 years only two samples have failed to comply with the regulations. Mr Sullivan if your firm operated 365 days in each year for 20 years and only failed in some job twice in all that time I would be the first to congratulate you not burst out at a council meeting about something of which I knew very little. Might I also inform you Sir that Whakatane is not the? only place at the present time that is experiencing the same trouble. For the last five years this trouble t comes and goes with seasonal changes of the year, but it only affects, the keeping not the fat content which you referred to as low standard. Do not forget that I said over the last five years and the pasteurising has only been in operation for the last six months. ‘ f

We are all to some extent affected by the power shortage of the present day, and the delay in the chilling of the milk is a very serious matter, but if we are short of this socalled power why should a new sawmill be connected to the already overburdened supply in the Borough? Now Sir you may know more now than you did last week. Yours etc., “WORSE THAN EVER” Little Bill.