British Food Journal Volume 26 Issue 1 1924

At a meeting of the Hull Corporation Health Committee, on November 22nd, the Town Clerk referred to the decision in the recent case of milk, alleged to have contained dirt. Originally the justices dismissed the summons on a legal point. The Corporation, prosecuting, asked for a case to be stated in the High Court, and the latter decided in the Corporation's favour, and sent the case back to the Hull magistrates to be heard on its merits. The evidence of the prosecution was that the milk contained 3·9 parts of dirt per 100,000 parts of milk, the far greater part of the sediment present consisting of manure. In previous cases prosecutions were secured where the dirt was slightly less, but this summons was dismissed on the ground that there was no standard laid down by law as to what amount of dirt might be permitted. If this was a reason for dismissal, then milk might be half dirt. That was absurd. The question was “What was the Corporation going to do?” He suggested that they should go on exactly as they were doing, take the cases, and place the responsibility on the justices. Perhaps if they went on a little longer they would get some idea at to what the Bench considered was such a state of contamination as to justify the local authority in taking action.