View report page

269
[1908
Milk.— 597 samples were submitted to the Public Analyst, who reported
against 52, or 8.6 per cent., as compared with 6.7 per cent in 1907, and with
an average of 10.5 per cent. since 1892. There is no doubt of the fact that
the amount of detectable adulteration of milk is now less than at any preceding
period, but it is very doubtful if adulteration is actually less. At one time it
was the custom to add water in considerable quantities, but there is reason to
think that the practice has been superseded by adulteration with separated
milk, which amounts to the same thing as depriving the milk of its fat or
cream. During the last seven years the analyses of 792 samples of farmers'
milks arriving at Finsbury Park Railway Station, show that only 12, or 1.51
per cent., gave a fat content of less than 3 per cent., whereas the analyses of
3,304 samples purchased from milkmen and dairy shops, showed that 251, or
7.6 per cent., had a fat content of less than 3 per cent. From the knowledge
of the Medical Officer of Health of the interiors of the milk depots in Islington,
he has no hesitation in saying that this difference in the fat content is not to
be accounted for by the use of milk separators in the borough, and, therefore,
he is forced to the conclusion that it has been accomplished by the addition
of separated milk, mainly received from butter factories or creameries,
to whole milk. The sophistication is very easily done. All that is required is
to know the amount of fat in the farmer's milk, which practically varies very
little from day to day, and then to add the amount of separated milk necessary
to reduce the fat to 3 per cent., the minimum allowed by the regulations of the
Board of Agriculture, if the milk is to be presumed to be genuine.
Dishonest traders work down to this minimum, and only recently a man,
who to the knowledge of the Medical Officer of Health has been in the trade,
and in a large way too, for the last twelve years, and doubtless much longer,
stated on oath in course of a prosecution for milk adulteration that it was a
general practice of the trade to add separate milk to new milk. The Medical
Officer of Health recently heard Counsel seriously contend in the High Court
that it was allowable to add separated milk to new milk, provided the
fat content was not reduced below 3 per cent. If so, it can only be
said that the trade is a most dishonest one. Fortunately, the figures showing
the analyses of the milks purchased or procured under the Adulteration Acts
are before him, and they prove that the average fat content of 5,050 milks,
which included all those that were sophisticated, was about 3.61 per cent.
Consequently that man's statement must be very much exaggerated. Nevertheless,
the farmers' milks arriving in Islington would admit of about one-twelfth
of their weight of separated milk being added to them to reduce them to a
percentage of 3.6 per cent of fat. In a recent prosecution it was sworn in