Preservatives in Milk

Abstract

I HAVE been astonished to learn from your English Government Blue-book about the scandalous, unnecessary and unnatural practice prevailing in England of putting drugs into milk for purposes of its preservation—a wrong and unnecessary act of adulteration. It is amazing that it should be pursued and for one moment permitted. Your highly appreciated publication will, I am certain, feel the necessity of defending nature's produce. All milk drawn from healthy cows is yielded sterile. The remedy against the use of drugs and late-refrigeration, &c., is to purify and preserve the milk in its natural sterile condition by quickly—on drawing it—aerating, cooling and refrigerating it down to the non-decomposing and non-fermenting temperature of 50° Fahrenheit or lower at the farms and rural factories before being sent off from the country, and having it conveyed, so chilled, into ordinary cold stores—the same as doubtless most of your butchers have, and with less reason—at the town dairy premises. Meat is so preserved and so conveyed, I understand, in England, and it is not nearly so susceptible to decomposition. The totally unnecessary consequences that are revealed by your recent official inquiry are scandalous. Dairy men evidently—and must constantly—find the milk they have to sell, not only in an advanced, but also dangerous state of fermentation, which, in self-interest, they can only, however, temporarily suppress by the processes of drugging, late-refrigeration and other disorganising practices, through neglect in the country of purifying and cooling the milk at once when drawn warm from the cow. There are plenty of simple portable appliances to use for the purpose, so why should not English farmers have them, and rural ice depots near railway stations for refrigeration of milk, as well as Continental, and notably American, country milk producers? Your farmers and milk distributors certainly need reform in their system, for you cannot possibly compete in quality of milk, butter or cheese with other countries where immediate purification by the practice of quick aeration and refrigeration of milk is pursued down to a non-fermenting temperature as soon as possible after being drawn from the cow. I have heard of a new method of milk preservation based on the infusion of gases (oxygen and carbonic acid) into milk. Whatever may be the merits of this new process I am not prepared to say, but if drugs are to be prohibited, this infusion of gases should be swept away with the rest of the doctoring methods of milk. By all means let the prohibition be utterly complete, and thus allow the consumer to drink nature's production and not chemical compounds. In this country (Belgium) the use of any drugs has long been prohibited, and our milk is superior and never complained about, and were drugs permitted a general protest would result.