How Canadians Communicate VI by Charlene Elliott

Author:Charlene Elliott [Elliott, Charlene]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781771990257
Barnesnoble:
Goodreads: 26490959
Publisher: Athabasca University Press
Published: 2015-08-03T00:00:00+00:00

THE CAMPAIGN FOR COMPULSORY PASTEURIZATION

One of the earliest and most important proponents of pasteurization in Canada was Charles Hastings, an obstetrician whose infant daughter had died of typhoid caused by drinking raw milk. In 1908, Hastings became the chair of the Canadian Medical Association (CMA) Milk Commission, which was established to investigate the status of milk supplies across the country and to pass legislation to secure a safe milk supply. When Hastings became the medical officer of health in Toronto in 1910, the CMA Milk Commission decided to turn over its efforts to Toronto’s Department of Health. Hastings forged an alliance with local Member of Provincial Parliament W. K. McNaught, who urged the provincial legislature to establish a commission to investigate the means by which the milk supply could be made safer. In 1911, the Province of Ontario passed a law giving municipalities the power to pass bylaws regulating the production, handling, and sale of milk. Toronto immediately passed a milk bylaw that placed strict regulations on the handling of milk, although it did not make pasteurization compulsory. Three years later, when a bylaw mandating pasteurization was passed, 80 percent of the milk sold in Toronto was already pasteurized (Hastings and Elliott 1915; MacDougall 1990, 98–104).

Another strong proponent was Alan Brown, the autocratic physician-in-chief at Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children (also known as Sick Kids). Brown, who gained much renown for his advocacy of child and maternal health and for his role as physician to the Dionne quintuplets, frequently pointed out that after the passage of Toronto’s compulsory pasteurization law in 1914, all of the children suffering from bovine tuberculosis at Sick Kids came from outside of the city of Toronto (Arnup 1994). Brown was often credited for convincing Premier Mitch Hepburn to pass a law mandating compulsory pasteurization in the province of Ontario, after giving him a tour of Sick Kids, where he saw children suffering from bovine tuberculosis (McCuaig 1999, 170).

The leading force behind the pasteurization campaign from the early 1930s to the 1960s was Gordon Bates, the founder of the Social Hygiene Council of Canada. In the early 1930s, the Social Hygiene Council, which had previously been concerned primarily with venereal disease, took on pasteurization as a way to expand the reach of the organization. Bates was an innovative communicator who stressed the value of pasteurization in newspaper articles, pamphlets, exhibits, and film. The council developed an exhibit titled “The Value of Pasteurization,” which travelled to health exhibits and fairs. At a typical event, children were shown health films, toured exhibits, and were given a glass of milk.3 The council also circulated articles touting the value of pasteurization, which ran in weekly newspapers across the country.4 In the 1930s, when the Social Hygiene Council became the Health League of Canada (HLC), the organization took over the mandate of the Ontario Committee for Safe Milk.5 The Ontario Committee for Safe Milk had been a broad committee that included public health workers, social service organizations, insurance companies, milk producers, milk distributors, women’s organizations, and the Canadian Public Health Association.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.