Part 8

VALUE TO THE PRODUCER.

Milk contests are of value to the producer in that they point out to him very clearly the exact condition of his product. This includes, first, the flavor of the milk. Clean milk from a clean cow has but little flavor or odor. If it is fairly well supplied with fat, pure milk may be described as having a rich, sweet, clean, pleasant flavor and odor, and free from foreign taints. Too frequently, however, the ordinary market milk delivered in our cities tastes of the cow stable, or the feed, and has too much acidity from the presence of millions of bacteria. In addition to flavor, milk is tested for chemical qualities, including fat and total solids. It is also carefully tested for bacteria. If produced under clean conditions and promptly cooled, these should not exceed 100,000 to the cubic centimeter. Where extreme care is used, as in the production of certified milk, the number may be kept below 1,000. Other points considered are the acidity of the milk, the appearance of the package (including metal parts, etc.), and foreign matter. Too often dirt of various kinds is found in the bottom of the bottle, indicating not only dirty conditions during milking, but poor handling, especially as regards straining.

Defects of the product having thus been pointed out, the dairyman will know what is lacking in his product and what he needs to do in order to make it perfect. If the dairyman enters the dairy-farm contest his place is carefully scored and given a definite rating. Ideal conditions are pointed out and he is shown what needs to be done and how it can be done without great expense.

But the question naturally arises: If the dairyman produces a perfect product, can he secure any more money for it? Up to the present time there has been but little incentive to the production of high-class milk, with possibly the exception of certified milk. Clean and dirty milk have sold for the same price and in direct competition with each other. This is not right. With other commodities the grade determines the price. It should be so with milk.

There are indications, however, that the dairyman who produces clean milk will in the future receive a premium for his product, and the careful inspection of the dairy farm and the milk produced is going to help bring this about. Already an advanced price is being offered by the milk dealers in Cleveland for milk from high-scoring dairies. This certainly is encouraging to the dairyman who is trying to produce a clean product. Every farm should be inspected, and such inspection should be welcomed by every intelligent dairyman. A score such as was given in this contest, stating certain conditions found in the dairies to be satisfactory, will have a tendency to increase the sales and inspire confidence. It will be for the dairyman’s interest in the future to produce clean milk, and he should be rewarded for his efforts. Producers should hold together in this matter. Public sentiment is with the movement for a better milk supply, and the prices of feedstuffs and labor being high, the producers have every reason to demand a fair price for a good product. But they should see to it that their product is clean and that it deserves the price demanded. It is not for the producer’s interests to allow the consumer to get the idea that this most valuable food product, milk, is produced and handled under dirty conditions.

VALUE TO THE DEALER.

Milk contests are of value to the dealer in assisting him to determine where the good dairies are, hence making it easier for him to find a supply of milk to meet the demands made upon him for a good product. With a supply of good milk to handle, there is less trouble with sour milk and less complaint from consumers.

VALUE TO THE CONSUMER.

The principal value of these contests to the consumer is in pointing out the defects in milk and showing him what good milk really is. Clean milk certainly ought to command a premium over dirty milk. With the average consumer, however, milk is looked upon as a necessity to be bought as cheaply as possible. If he is asked to pay a higher price, he immediately characterizes it as robbery. He gives little thought to the fact that the price of grain has been increasing during the past ten years and that wages for farm labor are not only higher but the labor is difficult to obtain. The consumer should know that it costs more to produce clean milk and that it means extra labor and extra care, and the dairyman can not be expected to produce it without a reasonable profit.

APPLICATION OF THE CLEVELAND PLAN TO OTHER CITIES.

The results obtained in the contest described in the preceding pages indicate that a similar meeting and exhibit would be of value in improving the milk supply of any city. It is simply a means of reaching the producer, the dealer, and the consumer, and educating them along the line of clean milk. That the plan worked successfully in Cleveland there is no question, and it is believed that there are scores of other cities where similar results might be obtained. Such a contest should have the direct support of the board of health or some organization directly interested in improving the milk supply.

EXTRACTS FROM ADDRESSES.

One of the objects of the contest was to discuss matters of interest to dairymen and give them an opportunity to ask questions. The following are some of the salient points brought out at the meeting:

Dr. H. G. SHERMAN, chairman municipal sanitation committee, chamber of commerce: The sanitary code prepared by the committee provides that no milk from tuberculous cattle is to be sold within the city limits, but it was not intended that these regulations should be put into operation at once, as some apparently feared. We believe--and we think that you agree with us--that these regulations should be enforced gradually and reasonably, with due regard to the interests of the dairymen and with arrangements for the proper reimbursement of the dairymen.

It is no longer a matter of theory, but it has been clearly proven that a good milk supply is of the greatest importance to the health of city dwellers. A large proportion of disease comes through improper food, and milk is one of the important elements of our food. Especially is this true of infants and young children, those least able to resist disease. With these it may constitute almost the only article of food. Epidemics costing thousands of lives have been traced to tainted or unclean milk. Deaths from typhoid fever, diphtheria, and scarlet fever are often caused by infection carried in the milk. In large cities nearly one-half of the children born die before they are 4 years old, but where all the milk has been carefully inspected this rate has been greatly diminished. You may say that you run the same risk with your children that we do with ours and that you have never discovered any danger; but this is not quite true. In the first place, the milk which you get is fresher than it is when is comes to us, and with you the disease germs which do the harm have not had time to multiply. In the second place, disease spreads much faster in a crowded city than in the country with its scattered population. In the third place, the power of resisting disease in the city is much less than it is in the country. Your children, who play all day in the fresh air and sunshine, who roll on the green grass, and who sleep in the cool night breeze are much more likely to shake off any threatened sickness than the babies in the slum districts, for instance, who must play in the gutter or on the hot pavement in the daytime and sleep in stifling and perhaps crowded rooms at night. The death rate among little children is half as high again in the city as it is in the country, and sickness is in even greater proportion.

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Dr. C. W. EDDY, chief of inspection division, public health department: When the Cleveland health department first undertook a definite system of sanitary inspection of the dairies shipping milk to the city the first question that presented itself was a form of report to be used by the inspector. It was first proposed to have a list of questions to be asked by the inspector, the answers to be his report on the dairy inspected. This was tried and found unsatisfactory, as it did not give an adequate description of conditions nor the exact relations of the good features to the indifferent or positively bad. While in this quandary I received a communication from the Dairy Division of the United States Department of Agriculture, in which was described the score card used by the inspectors of that division. It appealed to us at once as a solution of the difficulty, and we proceeded to give it a thorough trial. After a brief use of the card we decided to adopt it in our work.

The card first used has been modified somewhat to make it more applicable to local conditions, but the principle remains the same. The most important feature of the score card is its absolute fairness, it being impossible for the inspector who follows the printed instructions to display any partiality. It further calls the attention of the inspector to many details which he might otherwise overlook, which, from our standpoint at least, are very important. After a dairy is scored and the score card sent in we can tell exactly what conditions exist upon the farm--where it is well equipped and where it is deficient. It should be borne in mind that we inspect the dairies and use the card to bring out the bearing of the production of milk upon the public health. Therefore some features looked upon in this light are of more significance than others and are consequently given a greater weight, as, for instance, cleanliness of milking counts 10 points, while cleanliness of stable yard counts but 3 points. It is difficult for many dairymen to comprehend this, and they are prone to look upon an expensive herd of cattle or barns of more importance than the sanitary features of milk production.

The average score of dairies inspected is too low, being below 50. We hope and expect in time and as we score the dairies more frequently to raise the standard. This is, of course, a matter of education, but with intelligence and patience on both sides we shall certainly succeed, and those of you who profit by the points here discussed will be the first to reap a material benefit in the form of an increased demand for milk produced under sanitary conditions.

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Dr. R. G. PERKINS, city bacteriologist: Since the establishment of the laboratory the chief part of the work on milk has been of the ordinary routine type. Samples of suspicious milk have been studied, and a long series of counts were made on samples taken from the receiving stations and from wagons in the endeavor to find a suitable standard for the city. As a result of this work the standard was set at 500,000 bacteria per cubic centimeter. Even in the summer months it is the exception rather than the rule that this limit is passed, and it seems that a lower one might be quite practicable. The most interesting work done in the department was an endeavor to find the relative proportion of bacteria in milk obtained from the cans, as served to customers by the so-called “dip method,” and that obtained from bottles carried in the same wagons. An ordinance had been passed compelling the delivery in bottles, and these tests were made shortly before it went into effect. Samples were taken from dealers trading in various parts of the city, to cover all the conditions, and were taken every day for a week in each series. The conditions, such as weather, etc., were carefully noted and the following conclusions were reached:

In the average of the 40 samples the “dip” milk was found to contain 37 per cent more bacteria than the bottle milk.

In 77.5 per cent of the samples the “dip” milk contained more bacteria than that in the bottle. Sixteen samples were over 50 per cent higher, and 8 of these were over 300 per cent higher than the corresponding bottled samples.

In 22 samples the bottled milk had most bacteria, only 3 of these being more than 50 per cent over the “dip” samples.

Dry weather, especially with a stiff breeze, usually resulted in an increase of several hundred per cent in the bacterial content of the “dip” milk over the corresponding bottles.

The results of these examinations were considered adequate to justify the ordinance requiring the delivery in bottles exclusively, although in the case of a milkman who is dirty it is quite possible that the use of bottles may increase the amount of bacteria. This, however, is a matter which should be controlled by adequate inspection of the dairies and the bottling plants.

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Prof. WILLIAM PATE, Jr., city chemist: Our work consists wholly of the determination of quality as required by law and examination for the presence of chemical preservatives, colors, cream thickeners, or other adulterants. We collect and test 40 samples of milk a day, taken from the milkmen upon the streets and from the stations as it is delivered to the milkmen. The Ohio law and our municipal requirements are that the milk must contain 3 per cent of fats and 12 per cent of solids for the entire year. Formerly the requirement was 2.8 per cent fats and 11.5 per cent solids during the grass months of May and June, but it seems that 3 and 12 per cent are low enough even for these months, and we conclude that any herd which produces milk below these limits is not a well-balanced herd, at least before our law. It is very true that some herds are producing milk below 3 and 12 per cent, but the producer having such a herd should balance it with animals giving lesser quantity but richer quality so as to bring his average for the entire herd up to the legal requirement.