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"The fact that the meals are made up individually into
small casseroles and the time factor involved was the reason
for the large amount of handling of the food which took place
and it was not found possible to reduce this to any great extent.
Following a suggestion made by Dr. Hobbs of the Central Public
Health Laboratory the use of anti-bacterial hand-washing cream
was recommended and this is in use at the present time on a
trial basis. It is claimed to be far more effective than ordinary
soap in securing the elimination of bacteria from the
skin surface and its continued use is supposed to create a
condition which inhibits bacterial growth.
"The importance of rapid cooling to minimize bacterial
growth was emphasized and failure to do this was considered to
be the main cause for the high counts being obtained, as invariably
it was found that insufficient supervision was being
given to this particular aspect of food preparation - poultry
and meat being allowed to cool down slowly prior to refrigeration
with no control over temperature rises through frequent removal
from the refrigerator.
"This practice has now been changed. In one instance
poultry and meat are being cooked and following an interval of
a few minutes are put into deep freeze for a time, to allow
complete cooling and then removed to another refrigerator. In
a second case a cooling unit has been devised specifically for
the purpose consisting of an inner chest surrounded by 'dry
ice', in which poultry is cooled rapidly and then refrigerated.
"It was originally the practice to place dry ice in the
casserole containers leaving it there until the heating units
were switched on aboard the aircraft but this was abandoned due
to difficulties in practice. However, following recommendations
from this Department this practice was resumed.
"The first results obtained from the bacteriological examination
of foodstuffs gave surface plate counts at 37°C of from
3,000,000 to 2,000 per gramme and in several cases coagulasepositive
staphylococci were found on enrichment cultures.
"Swabs taken from the hands, nose, throat and (where ap
Plicable) lesions showed that a fairly high proportion of' food
handlers carried coagulase positive staphylococci of a type
which could cause food poisoning. In view of this high incidence
it was decided that exclusion of the persons concerned
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