I move amendment No. 8:—
New section. Before Section 40 to insert a new section as follows:—
40. Any urban sanitary authority, with the consent of the Minister for Local Government and Public Health, may prohibit the sale of milk in their area, except designated milk and pasteurised milk.
My amendment does not go so far as I could wish. I should like to make the provision of a safe milk supply compulsory rather than permissive. It will, however, give any urban sanitary authority the right, with the approval of the Minister for Local Government, to safeguard the inhabitants in their area from various diseases conveyed by milk. When in Canada in 1926 I visited the hospitals in Montreal, Ottawa and Toronto. I saw a number of children suffering from tuberculosis of the glands, bones and joints. I inquired why there should be so many, seeing that they had no slums? This raised the question of tuberculosis being communicated by milk. The milk supplied to the hospitals was either pasteurised, or from tubercular-free herds, but this did not then apply to the milk supply in those cities. There was at that time a great deal of attention being drawn to the question of a safe milk supply. A large quantity of milk produced in Canada was sent to the cities in the United States.
The following year, 1927, there was the largest recorded outbreak of typhoid fever in Montreal and some of the cities in the United States, including New York. This was traced to the milk coming from Montreal. There were 4,755 cases with 453 deaths. There was so much attention drawn to this that the United States threatened to exclude all milk coming from Canada unless it was efficiently pasteurised. It had this result: all milk sold in the large eastern cities of Canada and the United States must be either designated milk or pasteurised milk. Pasteurising milk does not alter its nutritive value and only very slightly the vitamins. In Toronto two years later, 1929 or 1930, there was an examination of 207 cases of tuberculosis in children and the bovine type of bacilli was found in 26 of these. But not one of these had been living in Toronto, where 99½ per cent. of the milk was pasteurised. These facts are sufficient to convince the most sceptical person of the urgent necessity of insisting on having a safe milk supply.
This Bill has for its object the reduction of the risk of communicating disease by milk. The Bill follows on the lines of the English Bill of 1922, and the Milk (Special Designations Order), 1923, and it is only natural to inquire how far it has succeeded in reducing the death and sickness rates from bovine tuberculosis in England. Within the past few years three experts of the highest standing, Doctors Griffith, Cumming and Foster, have examined large numbers of cases of tuberculosis from different parts of England, and they have found that in disease of bones, joints, cervical glands and lupus, over one-third were of the bovine type. These facts are not encouraging after about ten years of working the English Milk and Dairies (Amendment) Act, 1922. Are we likely to have any better results from working under the same conditions?
If anyone has any doubts of the fearful consequences of tuberculosis in children in Dublin, and the same will apply to other parts of the Free State, let him visit the Children's Hospital, Temple Street, the Children's Hospital, Harcourt Street, the Orthopædic Hospital, the Children's Hospital, Dublin Union, and Cappagh, where you will see large numbers of innocent and helpless children suffering from tubercular disease of the bones, joints, spine and glands. Many of them will never recover, and those that do will be maimed and crippled for life. It rests with the members of this House to say whether this tragedy of disease is to continue.
