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notify local authorities of dairy farmers who are registered by them.
74 visits were paid by sanitary inspectors during the year to cow sheds
and dairies.
Sampling
Samples of all types of milk produced or retailed in the district are
taken and submitted for analysis at the Colindale Laboratory, more
especially during the summer months. It is quite exceptional to receive
an adverse report, more especially about the heat treated milks: Special
attention is paid to the sampling of milk produced locally. During the
year 52 samples were taken and submitted to analysis. All but one
proved satisfactory. The one unsatisfactory sample was a milk from
a T.T. herd. Follow-up samples from the same source proved to be
satisfactory.
Complaints
While from the point of view of elimination of the risk of spread of
infection by milk the fact that much of that delivered and consumed in
the district is heat-treated is grounds for satisfaction, the arrangement
for distribution of the treated milk raises its own problem. Although
at one time there was hope that a satisfactory non-returnable container
might be devised which would have eliminated so many of the difficulties,
in fact the returnable glass bottle is still being used. Much of the trouble
arises from the abuse of the bottle in the home. There might have been
the neglect or failure by the staff at the bottling establishments to detect
anything unsatisfactory, a failure possibly due to carelessness or inefficiency,
but that failure would not have mattered if there had not been
the previous abuse. There are many ways in which the bottle is wrongfully
used. A common fault is the failure to rinse the bottle, with the
result that the milk dries and cakes inside the bottle. Bottles are often
used to hold contents other than milk and are later returned. A common
practice is to leave a note for the milkman in the neck of the bottle;
this gets pushed in. Although all the bottles are subjected to strenuous
cleansing processes, these cannot remove material which is firmly
deposited on the walls and of course often there is failure to wash out
other contents.
During the year 14 complaints were received. Four were about the
dirty condition of the bottle, five were of the presence of cardboard or
paper, two of the presence of glass. Sometimes it seems the glass must
have been present in the bottle when it was bottled; at other times it
has probably been introduced during the bottling process. These
complaints are of course those which have been brought to the notice
of the department. The figure does not necessarily indicate the true
number of such occurrences, but the actual number must still be a very
small proportion of the number at risk as it seems that every year some
fifty million milk bottles are distributed to homes in this district.
Slaughtering (B) MEAT
Before the Food and Drugs Act, 1938, there were three classes of
private slaughterhouse: