10 May, 191 1.] 



The City Milk Supply. 



307 



again to measure out milk to each customer, risking possible contamina- 

 tion on every such occasion. 



The one thing that stands in the way of general bottling for distri- 

 bution is the expense that is incurred by dairymen through breakages. If 

 a cheaper or more durable, as well as lighter, bottle or other package 

 were obtainable, the system would more quickly find favour. The bottles 

 do away with any suggestion of short measure being given ; and it is the 

 only satisfactory solution to the difficulty arising from adulteration of 

 milk by the employe distributing it. Dairymen have been frequently 

 fined for selling watered milk, when it was the employe who should have 

 been dealt with. Unscrupulous men have been seen to adulterate their 

 employer's milk in order that they might sell a few extra quarts on the 

 round, and pocket the proceeds. While prosecution of employes has done 

 much to check this practice, there would be less opportunity for fraud 

 if the milk were sold in sealed bottles. 



UNION DAIRY (mORRIS BROS., SOUTH MELBOURNE). 



Ideal conditions for a city milk supply would thus appear to be its 

 production on the farm from healthy cattle kept amidst clean surround- 

 ings, cooled by refrigeration, buttled, .sealed, and flelivered cold to the 

 customer. The cost of railway carriage and work of handling are, how- 

 ever, prohibitive of milk being conveyed far in that way ; and only dairy 

 farmers within easy driving distance of the city could afford to bottle and 

 send the milk out direct from the farm. The next best method, there- 

 fore, of handling the city supply is the thorough cooling on the farm, 

 and forwarding the bulk in cool trucks to distributing depots on the open 

 outskirts of the city, to be then bottled and sent out without delay. 



The work of retailing milk under the individual owner system, as at 

 present in vogue, is often spoken of by observers as being very expensive 

 to the dairymen on account of the great area that is travelled over by 

 each cart in working the several rounds. Among the many suggestions 

 that have been put forward for remedying this are municipal, co-operative, 



