11 JUNE 1948, Page 3

Milk Complications

The Report of the Committee on Milk Distribution, published at the end of last week, is a valiant attempt to reconcile national control with free competition. The retailing of milk has long been a complicated and unsatisfactory business, as seven official reports between 1919 and 1940 witness. The Committee had two tasks before it, one fairly simple and one thorny. To ensure that " clean, safe " milk is available it has come to the conclusion that all milk sold for liquid consumption, except in remote districts, should be pasteur- ised when equipment is available, and it gives much evidence to support this decision. It is with the business of distribution that the difficulties arise. Before the war delivery was so unorganised that when the Ministry of Food took control during the war it was able to save 75,00o vehicle-miles a day. There are at least four ways of distributing milk—direct to consumer, to retailer, to whole- saler or to country depots ; and the Milk Marketing Board, whose functions of control were mainly taken over during the war, were previously enforcing a minimum retail price and eliminating com- petition. To bring order to this chaos the Committee does not recommend nationalisation, but suggests a " Central Authority " comprised of five members, which is not only to control transport and the allocation of milk, to finance research and remote country depots, but itself to open depots and act as processer and retailer, experimenting with a monopoly in one of the new• satellite towns. Will this mixture of control and competition work ? Some of the members of the Committee are themselves doubtful. It has the merit, however, of causing a minimum of disorganisation. and in a difficult situation it may be worth trying.