BELI HASAN Vs. INDORE MUNICIPAL CORPORATION

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THE applicant is a milk -vendor at Indore and was found to be carrying for sale a quantity of milk below standard. He had not indicated the source on the container so that the toast for buffalo's milk had to be applied; but it is not of much consequence because it was so hopelessly below standard that if it was cow's milk, there was about 45 per cent of water and if it was buffalo milk, it was 50 per cent. Either way, there was an offence committed under sections 7(1) and 16(1)(a)(ii) of the Prevention of Food Adulteration Act. In view of the previous conviction, the applicant had to be awarded the minimum sentence of fine and imprisonment. The appeal has also been dismissed. In this Court a new point has been raided apparently about the alleged unreasonableness or invalidity of the rule concerned. The argument is that for cotton seed areas, that is to say, areas in which cow and buffalo feed consists to a considerable proportion of cotton seed, a separate standard has been prescribed for butter or ghee. This presupposes that the milk itself in these tracts is in some manner different from the milk in other areas where cotton seed does not occupy such an important part in the food of the dairy animals. Recently, Indore was included in the cotton seed tract, that is to say, ghee or butter produced in the Indore district will in one regard be tested according to a standard different from that of the ghee produced in the other tracts. From this, it in urged that in respect of milk also produced in the Indore district a separate standard should have been prescribed. Since no such separate standard has been prescribed for milk, as has been done for butter or ghee, the rule itself is unreasonable.

(2.) THE obvious short answer to this argument is that reasonable or unreasonable, the law as made by the Legislature or the appropriate rule -making authority has to be applied by the Courts. Since, however, this argument has been made, it will be helpful to examine it and to show that it is altogether baseless. It is a fact that when cows or buffalos are fed mostly on cotton seed, the butter content of the milk differs from that in the milk of the animals not fed on cotton -seed in one particular. It is not the quantity or the proportion that varies, as in fact it is likely that animals fed on cottonseed will give milk slightly richer in fat than otherwise; but the internal composition of the fat itself varies; in other words, while all butter consists for the most part of the glycosides of the fatty acids, the butter from the cottonseed fed animals has a different pro. portion of the soluble glycosides of the fatty acids lower in the series. So, a test for the butter or the ghee based on the assaying of the wares soluble glycosides will give different results according as the animal is fed to a considerable extent on cottonseed or on other matter not so rich in fat. Therefore, with reference to the butter and ghee from the cottonseed areas it is different from the figure for the same test for butter and ghee in other areas. But whenever we go to consider the percentage of fat or non -fat solid content in the milk, it is usually about the same irrespective of whether or not the animal is fed to a considerable extent on cotton -seed. There will be, of course, local and individual variations; but they have all been eliminated by prescribing a standard of the minimum of the percentages taken in a large number of samples; but these percentages have nothing to do with the place and the proportion of cotton -seed in the feed.