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the very proper step of calling the attention of all persons
engaged in the milk trade (other than the hucksters above
referred to) to the precautions to be observed for the prevention
of infection.
I have always felt it to be an anomaly, that the carrying out
of so important an Order should have been entrusted, as a rule,
to bodies which have no sanitary machinery. Thus in the
Metropolis (City excepted), the Metropolitan Board of Works,
as already stated, is the ''Local Authority," and in the provinces
the county magistrates, by virtue of the provisions of
the Contagious Diseases (Animals) Act, 1878. The Board, in
London, have delegated the duty of inspection of cowsheds
and dairies to a very limited number of officers who have
multifarious duties to perform under other Acts; in the country
to whatever extent the duty is carried out it is usually entrusted
to the police. Arrangements such as these are not calculated to
ensure the results intended by the legislature, and they do not
satisfy sanitarians, to whose representations the 34th section of
the Act, and the Order itself, may be said to be due.
The "Local Authorities" in the provinces, whence most of
our milk comes, have always shown themselves keenly alive to
the necessity of checking the spread of animal infectious
diseases: one could have wished that they had been equally
careful to make provision for the protection of human health,
by measures designed to prevent contamination of milk, as
required by the 9th section of the Order, viz., by prohibiting
any person suffering from an infectious disease, or having been
in contact with a person so suffering, from taking part in the
conduct of the business of a cowkeeper or a dairman. Cattle
however, being property, are much better looked after, as the
law stands, than man in respect of the prevention of the spread
of infectious diseases. The occurrence of animal diseases must
be reported, infected animals being isolated and quarantined, if
not at once slaughtered.