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209. Finally, we recommend that the council of any county borough or municipal borough, large burgh, or urban district, the population of which exceeds 100,000, and the London County Council shall have the right to prohibit the sale of milk (uncertified) as defined in paragraph 207 (iv) above after a date which shall be not earlier than five years after the initiation of the scheme of eradication described in the preceding sub-section, provided that it has given We have not less than two years' notice of its intention to do so. suggested that this right should be confined to the larger local authorities in the first instance, on the ground that the policy we recommend is necessarily experimental, and if applied haphazard by the smaller local authorities, might cause considerable hardship to particular groups of farmers. If, however, experience should show that this policy is successful in promoting indirectly the eradication of bovine tuberculosis, we believe that the minimum size of town required of local authorities before the right to prohibit the sale of uncertified milk is allowed might gradually be reduced.
210. If pasteurisation is to be officially encouraged, as it would be under the regulations which we have recommended, it is essential that every precaution should be taken to ensure that the process is carried out in a way which makes it the greatest possible safeguard to human health. At present sanitary authorities are charged with the duty of inspecting pasteurising plants. We have evidence to the effect that this duty is not in all cases effectively carried out. For example, we have been told in evidence of a licensed plant in which inter alia milk which had not been pasteurised was leaking into milk which had been pasteurised. This indicates perhaps as fundamental an error in the construction of the plant as it is possible to conceive. Inspection which overlooks such errors is clearly inadequate. The duties of sanitary inspectors should be made more precise.
211. The pasteurisation of milk to be sold under the order should only be permitted in plants, the design of which has been officially approved, which have themselves been tested on erection to ensure that they conform to the approved design, and which are frequently inspected during working by an officer of the sanitary authority, who should apply prescribed tests and record the results at each visit. The authority responsible for approving the design of plants should act only after consulting the National Physical Laboratory. It might also be desirable to require certain qualifica- tions of the person operating the plants.
212. An essential feature of such a plant is a mechanism producing automatically whenever the plant is worked a time and temperature chart, secured from all interference and accessible only to the inspector. It is needless to dilate upon the temptations which must arise when some accidental delay makes it important to the owner of the plant to reduce the time at which milk will be ready for delivery, or in other ways to tamper with this silent witness.
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(d) Recommendations in regard to diseases of cattle other than tuberculosis.
213. We have, for reasons given in paragraph 148, confined our principal recommendations to measures directed against bovine tuberculosis. Although for the reasons there explained, we are of the opinion that the time is not ripe for the launching of a comprehensive attack upon the other diseases of cattle, there are certain points in connection with them upon which we desire to submit recommendations.
214. The chronic streptococcal form of mastitis can be controlled in herds where it is prevalent only if laboratory tests are made of the milk of each of the cows so as to reveal those cases which, though capable of spreading infection, have not developed clinical symptoms. It is, therefore, essential that adequate facilities should be provided for farmers whose herds are suffering from this complaint to have such tests carried out. We recommend that the Ministry of Agricul- ture and Fisheries and the Department of Agriculture for Scotland should examine the existing laboratory equipment and scientific personnel devoted to veterinary preventive medicine in England and Wales, and Scotland respectively, and to take such steps as are necessary to secure that this service is available to farmers through their veterinary advisers in return for the payment of a fee to cover the cost.
215. The most pressing need in the control of Johne's disease is the perfection of the technique of diagnosis. Important progress has been made in this direction in recent years, and we recommend that the Agricultural Research Council should press on as rapidly as possible with their programme of research into this disease. The recent indications that this disease is on the increase gives an added Once the infected animals can urgency to this recommendation.
be detected in the early stages by a reliable diagnostic, it will be possible by at once weeding out the advanced cases and by segregating and fatting those not yet showing clinical signs to clean the herd up without much expense to the farmer.
216. The various problems connected with contagious abortion are at present under examination by a committee on Brucella abortus infection in animals and man appointed in May 1932 by the Agricultural Research Council in consultation with the Medical Research Council. We understand that important progress has been made by this committee in carrying out a thorough investigation into the various problems that this disease presents; and in particular that they are concentrating their attention on devising a method for its eradication. We consider that this is a question of great economic importance to the farmer and we recommend that this committee should be given through the Agricultural Research Council every possible facility for the completion of its programme.
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