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37
Meat and Other Foods.
Five private slaughterhouses continued to be licensed, but, owing to the control
of meat supplies by the Ministry of Food, no slaughtering of animals was carried out
in these slaughterhouses.
146 inspections were carried out at the Caledonian Market (a Ministry of Food
Depot), for the purpose of inspecting imported and other meat.
One slaughterhouse for horses was licenced.
Slaughtermen's Licences—20 licences are current, 13 renewals and 7 new licences
which were authorised during the year.
Visits and Inspections—During the year 1,002 visits were paid to various food
shops, markets, stalls, etc.
Bye-laws for the Protection of Food—No prosecutions have taken place during the
period under review.
Registered Artificial Cream Premises.
(At present dealing in Synthetic Cream)
Visits—3.
Ice Cream.
The administration of the Ice-Cream (Heat Treatment, etc.) Regulations, 1947/
1948, caused a considerable increase in the work of the Department, particularly having
regard to the increased number of persons dealing in this commodity. Difficulty
being experienced in obtaining a grade one quality by some of the manufacturers,
the Sanitary Inspectors engaged in the administration of these regulations paid
particular attention to premises where unsatisfactory ice-cream was being produced.
Samples were taken, at the different stages of manufacture, for bacteriological
examination in order to find out the source of contamination. In the majority of
cases the unsatisfactory product resulted from the lack of complete sterilisation
of the plant prior to manufacture and, following advice from Sanitary Inspectors,
improvements were experienced. It was found that a poor grade ice-cream
was often produced from premises having the most modern equipment, while
a grade one product was continuously produced on premises where, although the
equipment was far from up-to-date, particular attention was paid to sterilisation.
In the case of the former it appeared that difficulty was experienced in obtaining
complete sterilisation of the whole of the equipment, the cooler requiring particular
attention.
Visits to Ice Cream Premises. 607.
During the year 172 samples of ice-cream were sent for bacteriological examination.
The gradings of those submitted to the Methylene Blue Test were:—
Grade I Grade II Grade III Grade IV Total
54 41 27 38 160
Of the remaining 12 samples, 3 were found to be unsatisfactory.
Milk Samples.
The total number of samples taken during 1948 was 882.