[Report 1942] / School Medical Officer of Health, Cumberland County Council.

  • Cumberland (England). County Council.
Date:
1942
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: [Report 1942] / School Medical Officer of Health, Cumberland County Council. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    involved is concerned—and the boiling of milk or the preparation of dried milk products in rural schools in summer time with no fires on is very difficult, and the difficulty is just as great'in one case as in the other. Both dried milk and boiled milk involve the use of cups and the washing of these, and to my mind there is no distinc- tion, so far as the labour involved is concerned, between the use of boiled milk and of dried milk in schools such as is drawn in the report. There is another point of great importance. The provision of milk in schools is under the general direc- tion of the Board of Education. The Board of Educa- tion have not indicated that they contemplate or desire any reversal of or change in the policy of distributing wet milk to schools which they have in recent years, in conjunction with the Milk Marketing Board, strenu- ously advocated. The Board have laid it down that the source of supply must be approved by the Medical Officer of Health, but the report of the Medical Research Committee sharply limits the supplies which may, in their opinion, properly be approved to three groups to which, as I have shown, a fourth may be added. If the recommendations of the Medical Research Council are to be adopted then the approval of the Medical Officer of Health becomes superfluous. I have no quarrel with that, but I do think the Board of Education should without delay make it clear where they stand in this matter. Do the Board concur in the recommendations of the Medical Research Council or do they not? A recent letter from the Board to this Authority appears to show that they do not. The letter recommends the use of pasteurised milk wherever prac- ticable. We all agree with that, but the letter goes on to say “ The question of pre-emption of supplies of tuberculin-tested milk is not one fOr the Board of Educa- tion, *but where no satisfactory supplies of raw milk are obtainable tuberculin-tested milk, if available, may be supplied to the children at the normal price of id. per 1/3 pint.” The Board are prepared to make up the deficit incurred by the Authority in respect of any difference in price between tuberculin-tested milk and ordinary milk, but the fundamental point is that the Board, many * The italics are mine. i