The Daily News FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 2. PURE MILK.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 123, 2 September 1910, Page 4

The Daily News FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 2. PURE MILK.

Parliament has been discussing the question of milk, and it is worthy of remark that the only medical man in Parlia-

ment (Dr. Collins, M.L.C.) opened the discussion. Dr. Collins is the best known medical man practising in Wellington, and in his daily avocation he has a better chance of 'knowing what evil impure milk can do than almost any other man in the city. The agitation for a pure milk, supply to cities has been carried on spasmodically for some years, and the fact that reform is asked for in Parliament is evidence that it is still needed. About three years ago a. special commissioner was despatched from a Wellington paper to make complete investigations into the supply. There is no doubt that lie did so, and that the results of the enquiry showed that the supply of milk to city folk was very bad. The investigations proved that a considerable quantity of the milk came from farms in the close vicinity of the city, that the closer they were the worse were the conditions of management, but that the ill-treatment on the farms was not a circumstance to the ill-treatment en

route and by retailers and actual buyers. It was proved that a large proportion of the milk was sent away from Manawatu, and other farms, in a clean, wholesome

condition; that much of it remained on railway station platforms for many hours both day and night and quite unguarded; and that absolutely no provision was made at the city railway stations for its proper handling. The investigator saw a can full of milk outside the railway station on a filthy road at 8 o'clock at night in the summeV time. The same can was there until eleven o'clock on the following morning. It had not only ■become overheated, but dirty. The men who came for the can emptied it into a dirty can, and took it away. The empty would be sent .bade to the farm the next day with congealed and festering milk in all the seams. Only one company at that time handled milk received in a wholesome manner, and the whole of the evidence went to show that the farmer had the smallest share in the ill-treat-ment. In some cases milk-for sale was

kept under dirty counters of "all-sorts" shops, milk carts were found to be almost invariably unwashed, and the men who served the milk from the carts were unclean. That is to say, every pint of milk served might have meant the death of an infant, for there is no, food that so easily attracts the germs «f disease. But apart from the farmer, the railway hand, the receiver and the purveyor, there is the buyer —and the greatest blame of all may be unhesitatingly attached to him, or her. The ordinary citizen puts the billy on the doorstep, and the average milk carter fills it up in the dark with great haste. There is no 'insurance that the caTter, the step, the surroundings or the billy will be clean, and there is certainly no insurance that this sensitive food will be placed outside an area of contamination when it is taken into a house. The person who understands the extreme sensitiveness of milk must be amazed that more disease and death does not follow from the misuse of the article. Under existing conditions it is absolutely impossible that milk can get to the consumer's table without contamination, and any system that does not carefully protect milk from the cow to the throat of cipalities in Europe and in England have cipailties in Europe and in England have taken the milk business into their own hands and watch the supply froa the bvre to the doorstep—tut all these municipalities, guided.,by science, kill g*rm life in the product and leave it with' the customer in vessels that are carefully sealed. Impure milk is the most fre- ! quent cause of dysentery in infants, it is capable of carrying all water-borne diseases—such as typhoid fever—and is inj variably the cause of scarlet fever. The ; unnaturally fed child who is bound to J subsist on cow milk supplies the largest ! cla*s of victims to impure milk, and it |is this phase of the evil that appeals to municipalities, medical men. and those

who care for child life. The average person simply does not believe that there is death and destruction in impure milk, and so remains apathetic.' Apart .altogether from the mis-handling of milk, the trouble is deep. The modern calf is on the same footing as the modern infant—neither invariably gets its natural food, and a heifer calf can't grow into a first-rate milk supplier if she doesn't get what was made for tier. The statesman who can achieve a pure milk supply will do more real good than the inventor of an aeroplane to carry an army coTps.