The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1897-06-15
MILK INSPECTION
Suggestions by a Consumer Regard
ing Plans.
LAW PASSED LAST YEAR
Policemen and Agents of
Board May Test Milk.
What Legislature Intended-What
Board of Health May Do.
But it Won't.

Some of the milkmen are doing for
themselves" said the father of large
family, yesterday, after reading the
Advertiser what in California it re-
quires a salaried man to do and it
looks as though we are going to have
an even chance at pure milk after the
Dairymen's Association begins work.
Do believe milk is adulterated? Ger
tainly. There is no more doubt of it
than that whisky receives the atten-
ton of the bar-keeper before it reaches
the consumers lips.
I've been keeping house in Homo
lulu for nearly 10 years, and I've taken
milk from about the same num-
Der of dairymen, and l find the
greatest difference, but I don't
believe it all comes from the
south winds, either. Why / expect
from this on that whenever 1 have
occasion to find fault with my dairy
man for the quality of blue milk he
delivers he will tell me it's the wind.
We lay a good price for the fluid, and
it should be pure. If the newly-formed
association of dairymen can improve
it. so much the better. Did you ever
read the law which deals with people
who sell adulterated milk? No? Well,
there is one somewhere among those
passed during the last session of the
legislature You will find it some
where among the laws which require
a license for conducting the business,
and it provides penalty of $50 from
persons selling adulterated milk or
milk from which the cream has been
Skinned. The next section author
ICES any agent of the Board of Health
or any police officer to inspect and
test any milk sold or offered for sale
and to confscate any adulterated milk
which he may find. Have you ever
heard of a milk-man being held up in
Honolulu by policeman or an agent
of the Board of Health and the process
of testing the milk gone through with?
Not much. and if they had been. the
streets would many a time have run
with milky mud.
Pure milk is as essential to health
as pure beef. the physicians say, and
it is probable some one in the Legis-
lature was of the opinion that i'm
pure milk was being sold or the law
would not have been placed on the
books But it has never been en-
forced. Look what DocEery has done
on his milk crusades in San Francisco.
He has made vendors of the impure
article go out of business or stop pat
roniZing the water taps. The same re-
suit would ensue here if the law was
carried out as the Legislature intended
it should be- but the introducer made a
mistake when he expected policemen
TO become chemists and go armed with
a Iactometer and a clean bottle. Say
ing that any agent of the Board of
Health should be empowered to make
tests was insufficient; some one should
be especially appointed to Go the work,
and it is not too late now for the
Board of Health to assign some one
to the task 1t need not be done every
day or every night but it could be
done occasionally.
u see by the Advertiser that the
standard of milk fixed by the associa-
ton is per cent butter fat. Very
well. that should be the standard fur
nished consumers, and if they don't
get it they should pay l cent a quart
less for each one-half of l per cent
under that. If it costs the association
that much less. the same benefit
should fall to the consumer. I agree
with Manager Weirick when he says
milk famine may follow the slaugh-
tering of so many cattle. on account
OF their having tuberculosis, and as
the demand viii be as large as ii now
IS. the price will probably go up. Pos
sibly. water will be brought into TeQui-
sition after wagons leave the central
station with milk. To prevent any
such occurrence the Board OF Health