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24
ICE CREAM.
The Ice Cream (Heat Treatment) etc. Regulations came into
force on the 1st May, 1947.
These broadly require that the ingredients of ice cream shall
be heat treated after being mixed and that the mixture shall be
cooled until the freezing process is begun. After freezing the
ice cream must not be sold unless it has been kept at a temperature
not more than 28°F. or, if its temperature has risen
above 28°F„ unless it has again been heat treated and then kept
at not more than 28°F. after having been frozen. An exception
is made in regard to a complete cold-mix. A cold-mix is a
product which, among other things, is capable of being manufactured
into ice-cream with no addition except that of water,
being in this respect, analogous to dried or evaporated milk.
If a complete cold-mix is used the product, when reconstituted
for manufacture, must be converted into ice cream within one
hour of reconstitution.
Regulation 3(b) (iv) prescribes that certain thermometers
shall be used for indicating and recording the temperature to
or at which the ice cream is raised, kept or reduced. This regulation,
however, has not yet come into force. The date when
it will, is to be fixed by the Minister of Health.
There is no statutory standard prescribed to govern the
minimum fat content or other ingredients nor does any bacteriological
standard of cleanliness exist. At the moment there is no
test available the reliability of which is considered sufficiently
established to justify its use as a statutory test, non-compliance
with which would constitute an offence. A form of methylene
blue test, however, has been devised for ice-cream. This does
not provide a guarantee of safety, but it does serve as a simple
and practical method for grading ice cream according to its
degree of bacterial cleanliness. Briefly four grades have been
laid down, dependent on the time taken to reduce methylene
blue and it is suggested that ice cream which consistently fails
to reach grades 1 and II gives reasonable grounds to indicate
defects in manufacture or of handling calling for further investigation.
Twenty-nine samples were tested by this method during
the year and only thirteen reached Grades I and II. Thirteen
reached Grade III and three were placed in Grade IV. Whilst
these figures do not appear, on first sight, to be entirely satisfactory
the testing served a useful purpose. Moreover the
results do not appear to compare unfavourably with figures
given of more extensive testing in other areas.
It has been my firm opinion, held for a number of years,
that the greatest safeguard against bacterial contamination of