POWERHOUSE COLLECTION

Milk bottle cap

Object No. 2001/7/2

This milk bottle cap is a good example of the efforts undertaken in the 1930s and 40s to control the dangers of milk-borne illness, especially tuberculosis. Milk has been promoted as a health food since the beginning of the twentieth century, but until government legislation made pasteurisation compulsory in the late 1940s and early 1950s, milk could also carry disease. Potentially milk-borne illnesses included diphtheria, scarlet fever, brucellus abortus, polio and tuberculosis. Tuberculosis (or 'TB') is an infectious disease caused by a bacillus that on entering the body forms knot or knob-shaped lesions, or tubercules, in tissues like the lungs. Before the development of antibiotics in the 1940s, tuberculosis was a potentially fatal disease. It could be transmitted by breathing-in or eating infected matter, including drinking milk that came from cows infected with bovine tuberculosis. Infants and children were the most at risk of contracting TB through milk. At the Australasian Medical Congress in 1923 it was reported that more than a quarter of the children under four years of age admitted to the Children's Hospital in Melbourne with tuberculosis were infected with the bovine type. None of the adults examined in the same study tested positive to bovine TB. In 1930 the Commonwealth Department of Health found that 8 percent of dairy cattle in Australia were infected with tuberculosis, and that levels of bovine tuberculosis in the human population were highest in Victoria. Among its recommendations for the control of bovine tuberculosis was the regular testing of cow herds. Each cow had its own index card, with a photograph and name, to record test results. This cap, or 'wad', made from cardboard, is printed with the words 'Pure milk / T.B. tested cows'. The wad sat in the mouth of the glass milk bottle and kept out the air and flies that might contaminate the milk with germs. It also identified which dairy had produced the milk. The Devonshire Dairy was a large operation located at Hepburn Springs, 114 km north-west of Melbourne and 48 km north-east of Ballarat. Martha Sear Curator 2000