Condensed Milk
On 4 September 1882, a condensery began to produce sweetened condensed milk
in the dairy products plant of the Melbourne Milk Supply Company at Romsey in
Victoria, Australia.
The product failed, possibly because of the general lack of
knowledge of microbiology at that time. In 1886, the factory turned to
concentrated milk only to fall foul of the continuing problem of seasonality
of the milk supply.
In 1890, the Bacchus Marsh Concentrated Milk Company was
established and within a few years began to export. Production of processed
milk expanded during the First World War but fell away in the succeeding
twenty years.
Dairy Expert
One obvious move was the appointment of Government
dairy experts to advise the industry and to assist in technology transfer.
The first was David Wilson, the Victorian Dairy Expert, who had been
appointed in 1888.
The last was the South Australian Dairy Instructor who was
not appointed until 1905. M. A. O'Callaghan, who in 1896 was the first New
South Wales appointee later became the first Commonwealth Dairy Expert.
It is
possible that Wilson's value to Victoria in promoting separators, in the
introduction of pasteurization and in the appointment of H. W. Potts, a
chemist, to lecture to factory managers and butter-makers, stimulated the
other colonial/State governments to action.
Pasteurization and Hygiene
In the early 1890s Wilson visited Europe to study 'pasteurized and
fermentized' butter and in his report for 1893-4, he forecast that if
pasteurization became general, there would be no need for boric acid.
He
urged the industry to adopt it and within two or three years appointed Robert
Crowe as an instructor in the use of the pasteurizer.
Pasteurization, the
controlled heat treatment of perishable liquids to kill pathogenic
micro-organisms, was invented by Louis Pasteur in the 1860s.
It was used
commercially in Europe in the eighties and shortly after was taken up in
America, where its demonstrated value in saving infant lives led to its
adoption for milk supplied to several cities. Its use in Australia was not
general until after the Second World War, when the major advances in dairy
technology in this country occurred.
Even though the Victorian Health Act of 1890, for
example, dealt with the construction and sanitation of dairies, a major cause
of the quality crisis referred to above was the almost universal ignorance of
hygiene in the dairy, of cleaning and of sanitizing cleaned equipment.
Even
in the 1930s the Victorian Superintendent of Dairying found it necessary to
insist on the need both to sterilize equipment after cleaning and to ensure
that the water used was in fact boiling. Sanitation problems were exacerbated
by the introduction at the turn of the century of the first milking machines,
but the wholesale use of this equipment was delayed until the late thirties
following the easing of the economic depression and the general availability
of electricity.
In the 1870s Thomas Mort used refrigeration to transport city milk
supplies but refrigeration was slow in coming to the industry. Some dairies
used it before the First World War and many farmers used
water coolers.
As late as the early 1920s, the quality of the milk supplied
to both Melbourne and Sydney was causing concern and it was only in 1922 that
dairymen supplying Melbourne, for example, were required to cool their milk.
In this same period, herd testing and the regular chemical and
microbiological examination of milk supplies began to be implemented. Bottled milk appeared in
1923, but was only slowly accepted. If properly pasteurized and handled, it
was far safer than the delivery of loose milk, but it was, and still is, very
vulnerable to light.
