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Your Medical Officer immediately referred the matter to your Senior Port Health Inspector on
the Royal Docks instructing him that as soon as the vessel arrived at her berth, the consignment
should be detained and that samples of the affected butter should be taken for both chemical
and bacteriological examination.
The vessel duly arrived on the 15th February and berthed in the Royal Victoria Dock. The
affected consignment consisted of 41,297 x 56 lbs. cartons of butter. Each cardboard carton
contained a slab of butter wrapped in oil-proof paper. Samples were drawn the same day and
submitted to the Public Analyst and Bacteriologist but in each instance nothing abnormal was
found.
In the meantime and in order not to delay the discharge of the vessel as a whole, the butter
had been discharged overside into lighters, still under detention, and your Medical Officer received
a letter from the New Zealand Dairy Products Marketing Commission, suggesting that in
order to avoid congestion in the dock and in view of the extreme difficulty in finding a Cold
Store prepared to receive this produce, permission be given to move these craft as they completed
loading to the Wharf at Convoy's Ltd., Fulham, where the butter could be stored in a cool
air chamber.
To comply with this request would mean that the butter would leave the jurisdiction of this
Authority to enter that of the Public Health Authority of Fulham, but in view of the circumstances
your Medical Officer telephoned the Medical Officer of Health of Fulham who very kindly consented
to allow the butter to enter the Fulham area where it would still remain under the detention
of this Authority, pending further arrangements.
At this stage it was deemed desirable to call a Conference of all the interested parties to
decide on the further action to be taken in the disposal of the butter.
Accordingly a Conference was convened by your Medical Officer in the Central Office on the
29th February. It was attended by representatives of the Importer, the Insurance Company,the
Salvage Association and the Cartage Contractors.
At this Conference, at which your Medical Officer took the Chair, it was decided that the
butter should, in the first instance, be "sorted" into three categories, namely:—
Category (1) Apparently sound.
(2) Semi-damaged (loss of shape).
(3) Extreme damage.
and that the sorting should be carried out in the presence of your Chief and Senior Health Inspectors,
a representative of the Insurance Company and a Health Inspector nominated by the
Medical Officer of Health of Fulham.
In the meantime it was left to the New Zealand Dairy Products Marketing Commission to instigate
enquiries as to a firm or firms who would be prepared to take the butter and when a
decision had been made, the Commission should notify your Medical Officer who would then be
in a position to consider the question of release.
The final "sorting" of the butter at Convoy's Wharf resulted as follows:—
Category (1) — 37,684 cartons
(2) 3,265 "
(3) 251 "
and a quantity of loose
collected pieces of
butter, representing 97
Total 41,297 cartons
Your Medical Officer subsequently received five applications from individual firms to deal with
the butter which was disposed of as follows:—
Category (1) - 37,684 cartons
Released to three firms for conveyance to their own premises where each block of butter would
be guillotined" half an inch all round, the remainder being considered suitable for blending and
subsequent marketing as first grade butter, the trimmings to be disposed of for technical purposes.
In each case the operation was carried out under the supervision of the Medical Officer of
Health of the area in which the premises were situated, the Medical Officers of these districts
having been informed of the circumstances and their consent obtained.
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