Milking the Public
CONSUMING INTEREST
By LESLIE ADRIAN
Poor consumer, too. He/she is going to have to pay more for even less. Where milk deliveries used to be twice a day, with dairies competing for custom a few years ago, in London and other big cities the large milk suppliers long ago got together and zoned their distribution areas. After this it was possible to have any brand of milk you like as long as it was Express or United, or whatever. Now they are obviously preparing to reduce deliveries to twice or at the most three time a week. We shall not even have the chance of getting up early and going down the road to buy fresh milk, as Parisians do. My very, good friend the milkman has been struck off the visit- ing list, but not by me.
Drinka pinta mllka day, apart from having a bad effect on juvenile spelling (like the small boy I knew once who always spelt you `yuh' because he read American cowboy comics), is already an out-of-date slogan. It will now have to read `drinka pinta homogeniseda day ifya can take it.' I'm afraid, milk-lovers, wherever you are, that the choice is no longer simply between pasteurised and homogenised. One day, not too far distant, this choice will be reduced to having the homogenised-pasteurised stuff called Long- life, on which the caveman Lafferty subsisted for 130 days, or nothing. An Express Dairy invention, Longlife is obtainable, I gather, in Hong Kong and the Grand Cayman Isles, but not, last weekend at any rate, in Greater London. This Longlife tastes distinctly like boiled milk which is hardly surprising considering that it is more than boiled for two seconds (they raise it to 137-149° Centigrade) and then pumped into sterile plastic packs. One pint costs the 'modest price' of one shilling, just one penny more than the price of Jersey milk. Another upwards adjustment that we have to get used to. But the beauty of it is that it keeps without benefit of refrigerator for 'weeks': to quote the official leaflet, which I feel is slightly exaggerated, Longlife is 'dairy-fresh, full-cream milk that keeps for weeks.' In Gibraltar, where they have had no fresh milk for a quarter of a century, thanks, I suppose, to the old Spanish Customs, they are said to be drinking Longlife instead of reconstituted powdered milk. There's loyalty for you.
Facing up to the fact that the cost of milk distribution will either have to be paid for in the price of a pinta or that we shall have to accept the Davies Report prediction that in the next two years daily deliveries will drop to three times a week, it looks, however much we hate the thought of it, as if Longlife is going to have its uses. The Government might, meanwhile, drop the purchase tax on refrigerators to help' the house- wife preserve her infrequently purchased perish- ables. And, incidentally, couldn't the Milk Marketing Board stop overselling their undis- tributable product? Is milk to be yet another fresh commodity that our grandchildren will never know, just as we, for the most part, never get fresh bread, real beer, peas from a pod and custard or ice-cream made with milk, cream and eggs?
One is seldom glad to be wrong, but I am happy to report that my announcement of Raymond Postgate's retirement from the editor- ship of the Good Food Guide was premature. At least, unlike the late liar, I did not refer to him as the late Raymond Postgate. He tells me that he is to be joined this week by Mr John Ardagh of the Observer, who will be his deputy editor, but that he will be carrying on the good work of promoting good food in person. Long may he reign.
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