26 



SCIENCE BULLETIN, No. 20. 



The process of contaminating this water had been going on in chis manner 

 for years, until the well had become thoroughly infected. 



The manager of the factory was instructed to get a better water supply for 

 use in manufacturing butter, and was strongly recommended to sink another 

 well some distance from the old one and to use the new supply solely for 

 washing butter. The old well could then be set apart for the condensers, 

 boiler, &c. This course was recommended in preference to trying to clean 

 out the well by pumping, it being considered that the walls of the shaft would 

 also be contaminated. It might be noted that the engine and boiler rooms 

 of this factory formed a barrier between the pig-run and the butter and cream 

 compartments ; also, on the days our examination was made the weather 

 was calm, which accounts, in part, for the fact that the atmosphere exposures 

 made in the churn room were so clean. 



This example serves to emphasise how easily such a perishable product as 

 butter can be contaminated, and how infection can be obtained through most 

 unlooked-for agencies. Who would have suspected that water drawn from a 

 deep underground spring would be steeped in germs that are to be found on 

 the surface? Here again, the care and expense entailed in properly 

 pasteurising cream were incurred only to be partially nullified by ceinfecting 

 the butter with the water used for washing it. Water used for such purposes 

 cannot be too closely examined. During the past few months the Dairy 

 Branch has warned several factories on this matter, as a result of bacterio- 

 logical examinations carried out by the Department. The last instance is 

 one where the water for washing the butter is drawn from a well into which 

 water soaks from an old swamp. The company has put down shafts in different 

 directions with the same result, and as good water is seemingly unobtainable 

 in the vicinity of the present site, the removal of the factory to where it can 

 be got is now under consideration. A pure water supply is an absolute 

 essential for dairy produce factories. Those factories that have one should 

 carefully guard it from contamination. In many cases inferior water can be 

 greatly improved by a proper system of filtering, and even where the supply 

 Ls fairly good it would be all the better for being filtered the pipes through 

 which it is pumped in the course of time always become, to a certain extent, 

 dirty and this sedimentary matter should be removed. 



TABLE III. Showing Numbers and Kinds of Micro-organisms found in 

 1 Gram. (1 c.c.) of the following samples. 



