The Need for Cheaper Milk Monday's debate on the Milk
(Amendment) Bill revealed small ground for complacency. No Government speaker attempted to dispute Mr. Williams' statement that while manufacturers pay only 5d. a gallon for milk, the public pays 2s.—a disparity that certainly seems to demand correc- tion. But Mr. Morrison maintained that the admittedly inadequate consumption of milk was a question of taste rather than of price, and quoted a report of the Economic Research Trust that the consumption of milk within present income limits could be doubled if people only developed a taste for it. But although the growing popularity of the milk bars is an interesting example of the way tastes can be altered, choice is bound to be largely determined by con- siderations of cost. The recently published Memorandum of the Children's Minimum Council showed unmistakably the inadequacy of the milk drunk by mothers and infants and the impossibility of remedying this situation without a national cheap milk scheme organised on the lines of the Milk Marketing Board's experiments in the Special Areas. The proposed scheme would make milk available at rld. a pint for all expectant and nursing mothers and children under five. In view of the very widespread agreement on this question the time for Government action seems overdue.
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