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88
INSPECTION AND SUPERVISION OF FOOD
(A) MILK
Production
Local authorities have for years been concerned with the care of
milk at all stages. An order of 1885 required persons following the
trade of cow keeper or dairy man to be registered. By the Milk and
Dairies Order, 1926, every local authority was required to keep a register
of all persons carrying on in their district the trade of cow keeper or
dairy man, and of all firms and other premises used as dairies. By the
Milk and Dairies Regulations, 1949, however, the Minister of Agriculture
and Fisheries became responsible for the registration of dairy farms and
of persons carrying on the trade of dairy farmer. The execution and
enforcement of the regulations on dairy farms (except in so far as they
relate to diseases communicable to man) became the responsibility of
the Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries, while local authorities retained
responsibilities for those provisions which apply outside dairy farms, for
the provisions relating to diseases communicable to man and for the
registration of dairies which are not dairy farms and of dairymen who
are not dairy farmers.
The number of cow keepers in this district had been declining for
a number of years because of building development so that the number
had fallen to 17 by 1934. Since then the number has further declined
so that to-day there are only nine. These are: Messrs. Hall & Sons,
Pinner Park Farm; Harrow School, Watford Road; S. K. Hedges,
Pinner Wood Farm; Noad, Wood Farm Ltd., Wood Farm, Wood Lane;
P. T. Dalton, Copse Farm; G. Williams, Grove Farm, Stanmore;
Convent, Little Company of Mary, Harrow; R. Bradley, College Hill
Road, Harrow Weald; L. Smith, Oxhey Lane Farm, Oxhey Lane.
All but the last two, which produce ungraded milk which is sold
wholesale, produce tuberculin tested milk.
Distribution and Licensing
Milk is liable to contamination by a variety of organisms. Being
an excellent medium for the growth of bacteria and being so often consumed
raw it can be particularly dangerous. Many of the cows in this
country have been infected by the bovine tubercle bacillus; a proportion
of these yield milk containing virulent organisms. Many ways have
been tried of reducing the incidence of tuberculosis in cattle. The
milk from special herds, the tuberculin-tested cattle, is almost always
free from the tubercle bacillus. But while in general such milk is safer
than other raw milks because of the special attention given to the cattle
and to the question of milk production, it can nevertheless be infected
The organisms may be from the cow as in the case of the brucella of
abortus fever, or from the human such as the streptococcus which might
cause scarlet fever or sore throat in the consumers. These risks can be
virtually eliminated by heat treatment of the milk, a treatment which
may be sterilisation or pasteurisation in which the milk is heated to a
certain temperature for a specified length of time so that the pathogenic
organisms are killed. The practice of heat treatment of milk is growing.