398 MILK AND THE PUBLIC HEALTH chap. 



his milk by reducing the fat to 3'0 per cent by the 

 addition of skim milk. Obviously he can add one gallon 

 of skim milk totally fat free to six gallons of milk with fat 

 content 3 '5 to bring its combined fat content down to 3'0 per 

 cent. The average retail price of milk is 4d. per quart, so 

 that on every seven gallons of milk he makes four quarts = 

 Is. 4d. less the cost of the separated milk. 



To make the illustration concrete, it will be supposed that 

 the fraudulent purveyor is trading in a provincial town such 

 as Colchester with a population of 42,000 odd, and that he only 

 supplies -^-^ of the whole population. A reasonable allowance 

 of milk is 8 oz. per head per day. This with the above popula- 

 tion is equal to 16,800 pints per day = 2100 gallons. Supply- 

 ing gl^ of this, the fraudulent dairyman wiU supply 42 gallons 

 per day. It has been shown above that one-seventh may be 

 separated milk without infringing the standard, so he sells 

 6 gallons of milk per day of separated milk at the price 

 of milk = 8s. per day. In a year his illegal profit will be 

 365 X 8s. = £146, less the cost of the separated milk. 

 This at 4d. per gallon would amount to (4x365x6) 

 £36 : 10s., or at a liberal allowance £46. This gives a clear 

 profit of £100 per annum. 



In this particular town the Food and Drugs Acts are well 

 enforced; 2^ samples per 1000 of population (105 samples) 

 are taken, of which 5 are milk samples. It is mathematically 

 likely, therefore, that only one sample per annum would be 

 taken from the fraudulent vendor, as he supplies only J^ of 

 the population. If his milk sophistication is done with care 

 his sample will probably not infringe the standard, or if it is 

 just below he will not be prosecuted, since prosecutions are not 

 instituted when the fat is only just below 3"0 per cent. The 

 present standards allow him to pocket the £100, and if he is a 

 manipulative artist his risk is negligible. If, of course, he 

 deliberately reduces the fat per cent to 2'5 by adding separated 

 milk, his profit is over £200 per annum. On mathematical 

 ■chances he would not have a sample taken for six months, so 

 he would make a clear £100 before he was detected. Not 

 infrequently some trumped-up story is accepted as mitigation 

 of the offence, sometimes even condones it, and at the worst he 

 usually is fined 10s. to 20s. Perhaps with costs it totals to 



