View report page

44
Factories, Workshops and Workplaces
368
Offensive Trade (tallow melting) 1
Registry Offices 10
Nursing Homes 10
The foregoing premises undergo regular visitation by
the Health Department stall', and no less than 1,880 inspections
were made.
XI. INSPECTION AND SUPERVISION OF FOODSTUFFS.
There can be no more important work in Public Health
than the provision and the supervision of a sound food
supply of a people. More and more is the public alive
to this question, and because the demand for a clean food
supply is active, the retailer finds that it pays not only
to protect his food stuffs from contamination, but to provide
that it is beyond all question of good quality. Taking
only one kind of food, milk; during the past five years
milk distribution in Bromley has been revolutionised.
Loose milk has practically disappeared, and to-day 90 per
cent. of milk is distributed bottled from registered
premises. The increase in the use of "Pasteurised"
milk must safeguard us against milk infection; the public
still tends to judge milk on its cream line and not upon its
cleanliness and wholesomeness.
Minor offences against hygiene of food still occur;
the transport of food is by no means what the hvgienist
would desire. Fruit, vegetables, etc., are still hawked
about the town in open carts; fish is still transported in
dirty boxes; old newspapers are still used for wrapping
up fish sold, and there are a few sweetstuff shops and stallholders
in the market who handle their produce and blow
into the bags. Bread is distributed universally unwrapped
and unprotected from human contamination.
The supervision of foodstuffs is one of the most important
branches of the work of the Health Department's
staff, and were it not for the keen supervision which is
exercised in Bromley, the itinerant hawker would be the