CALVES AND SEERILISED MILK.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXIX, Issue 2, 23 April 1914, Page 4

CALVES AND SEERILISED MILK.

A few weeks ago the results were published of the experiments carried out by the Royal Agricultural Society of England in the rearing of healthy calves from tuberculous parents by segregation and feeding on! sterilised milk. Nearly all these calves were attacked with white scour, and it was freely suggested that this was due to the sterilisation of the milk, which process, although it destroyed the bacilli, at the same time destroyed the nutritive value of tae milk. * Sir John M'Fadyean, principal and professor of too Royal Veterinary College, in refuting this idea, said that so far as he was aware there was no experience and no experimentation to support the view that milk, from the nutritive point of view, was injured in any way by steaming of boiling. One had frequently' seen statements to the contrary within comparative! v recent times, but his strong impression was that the people who published those views had not taken the trouble to examine the evidence. He was perfectly certain that one could say by what had actually happened, that not only calves but children could be reared on milk that had been steamed. Thousands of calves had been reared on steamed milk. Ho did not think there was any connection whatever between the use of the partially heated milk employed in the experiment and the occurrence of white scour. It was a well-known fact that every year outbreaks of white scour occurred throughout the country, and broke out in animals under the most diverse conditions. V hite scour was practically always a bacterial disease and infectious, and they had been the' victims of misfortune in their experiment. He denied strenuously, and ’ho hoped the opinion would not be put about, that those calves died because the milk had been heated to about 200 degrees Fall.