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153
to add any presevative to milk and it is very
rarely indeed that a preservative is found nowadays.
One sample of sterilised milk was submitted
for examination owing to several other bottles from
the same source being unfit for consumption. This
particular sample was satisfactory when purchased,
but it contained among other bacteria Bacillus
subtilis and Streptococci faecalis and pneumococcus.
The process employed for sterilising milk is not one
which will necessarily kill all bacteria, though
all except thermophilic and spore-forming ones
should be destroyed. The average fat of all milks
examined was 3.46 per cent. and the average
solids-not-fat was 8.70 per cent.
A sample of butter submitted for suspected
poisoning was found to be genuine dairy butter.
Two samples of fresh cream examined during
the year contained over 50 per cent. of fat, and,
in my opinion, the public should be protected from
the misleading descriptions of inferior, and usually
imported, tinned goods.
There is a common tendency among vendors
of tinned cream to label their goods as "Rich
Thick Cream" or with words to that effect,
although the actual butter-fat content is only
about 20—23 per cent. In such cases the thickness
is obtained by homogenisation, a process to
which cream is submitted before sterilisation in
order to avoid separation, but the housewife is
unable to detect the difference between the effect
obtained by this means and that due to the high
fat content of ordinary cream, which usually
contains from 45 to 50 per cent. of fat.
A sample of so-called dried "humanised" milk
examined during the year contained only 23 per
cent. of fat, whereas the Dried Milk Regulations
stipulate that dried milk must contain 26 per