View report page

109
V—FOOD.
§ 1.—FOOD PREMISES.
The dairies, cowsheds, and milkshops, the slaughterhouses, the places where
raw foods are prepared, and the marketing places have been regularly visited
and inspected. The markets and marketing streets have also been regularly
visited on Saturday nights and Sunday mornings during the summer months.
Bakehouses, restaurant kitchens, and similar workplaces fall under the
Factory and Workshop Acts, and have been dealt with under Part IV.
Defects in Dairies and Cowsheds Order.
A case which came before the Stipendiary Magistrate at the police-court,
Manchester, on October 5th, 1906, brought into prominence a shortcoming in
the Dairies and Cowsheds and Milkshops Order, made under the Contagious
Diseases (Animals) Act, 1894. A representative of the sanitary department
of the Corporation stilted that the defendant was registered in respect of
premises in Vine Street, but carried on his occupation elsewhere. There was
no allegation that there was anything amiss with the premises in respect of
which the defendant was not registered. It appears that the sanitary
authority has hitherto been under the impression that diarymen had to be
registered in respect of each place they occupied and that each place must be
entered on the register. The stipendiary held that under the order a man
may carry on the business of a cowkeeper without registration at all, apart
from this particular Order. The Order imposes certain restrictions. One is
that he shall be registered ; that is all. — A man is only liable to be registered
for the place—in this case Manchester—in which he is entitled to carry on the
business of cowkeeper. The summonses were dismissed.—" British Medical
Journal," October 13th, 1906.
§ 2.—UN WHOLESOME FOOD.
Dirty Milk.—In reference to the seizure of a churn of dirty milk at Euston
Station on 20th February, 1906, of which a brief account was given in the
Annual Report for 1905, at the begining of April, 1907, I wrote to the
Editor of the " British Medical Journal " as follows: —
"In the" British Medical Journal" of the 30th, ult., in a leading article
under the head of ' The Tubercle Bacillus in Milk ' is mentioned a case which
was decided at the Tower Bridge Police court on May 12th, 1905. The article
reads as if the Corporation of London had been the prosecutors in the case.
As a matter of fact, the prosecutors were the St. Pancras Borough Council,
and the first hearing was at the Marylebone Police Court, but Mr. Chapman,
the Magistrate, at the second hearing was back at his own Court at Tower
Bridge and consequently the case was heard and decided there, far away from
St. Pancras, so that it is not at all astonishing that it should have been looked
upon as a City of London case.
I should like to point out also that the milk in question was an obviously
dirty milk, visibly dirty to the naked eye, and consequently the consignment was
seized, taken to the Magistrate—who saw the milk himself—condemned as unfit