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OTHER FOOD PREMISES.
Bakehouses.
At the end of the year there were 127 bakehouses in the
Borough. Of these, 43 are underground and 84 above ground.
30 are classified as factory bakehouses owing to the installation of
machinery. The Sanitary Inspectors made 388 inspections. In
29 instances it was found necessary to serve notices.
Ice Cream.
The increased consumption of ice cream in this country in
recent years has attracted to the industry, as one would expect,
a large number of manufacturers and vendors, with the result
that the time has arrived when more effective means of controlling
the preparation, storage and sale of this commodity are
required.
The Public Health Authorities are charged with the duty of
ensuring that all articles of food are fit for human consumption,
and the easy manner in which ice cream can be contaminated,
with the resulting danger to health, compels attention to the need
for maintaining a high standard of purity of this article.
Moreover, the public are beginning to realise the possibility
of their health, and that of their children, being prejudicially
affected by the consumption of ice cream made under insanitary
conditions, and are becoming anxious on this matter.
The experience in Camberwell in connection with vendors of
ice cream seems to justify these fears, and gives proof to the
well-known fact that ice cream may be a fertile source of acute
intestinal illness.
In 1921 several cases of enteritis in this Borough were traced
to the consumption of ice cream sold by an itinerant vendor.
Many similar outbreaks of illness in England in the past have
been suspected to be due to this cause.
The high bacteriological count shown in the following report
on samples of ice cream which were submitted for analysis during
the past two years is evidence of the possibility of ice cream
of this standard causing ill-health: —
No. 1. 2,000,000 organisms per c.c.
10,000 bacillus coli per c.c.
No. 2. 3,900,000 organisms per c.c.
Bacillus coli present in 1/100th c.c.
No. 3. In a dilution of 1-100,000 the organisms are too
numerous to count. Bacillus coli appears in
24 hours in 1/50 c.c.