204 AGRICULTURE OF MAINE). 



THE FOOD VALUE OF MILK. 



This aspect of the relation of milk to human health is a par- 

 ticularly pleasant one to touch upon. It represents the health 

 and life sustaining properties of cow's milk as an everyday 

 article of diet. 



Perhaps the most unfortunate thing about the entire litera- 

 ture of milk and the present agitation relative to the use of 

 cow's milk throughout the country is the slight amount of 

 emphasis that has been placed on the value of milk as contrasted 

 to the dangers of milk as an everyday article of human diet. 



Milk as an incubator of infections, the limitations of the cow 

 as a substitute for the human mother, the connection between 

 dirty, stale and decomposed cow's milk and the summer 

 scourge of the innocents — all these themes have been worn 

 threadbare, all have been argued to the point of exhaustion 

 and all more or less conclusively proved. But the beneficent 

 role played by the maligned cow even under the most adverse 

 conditions, in stepping into the breach between life and death 

 when mothers fail, has received all too scanty emphasis. 



It may even be seriously questioned whether some of the 

 well intentioned popular agitations, relative to the disease- 

 bearing possibilities of milk, have done as much service to the 

 cause of humanity, by pointing out the existence and insisting 

 upon the correcting of certain very real and serious dangers, 

 as they have done injury to that cause by inducing an exag- 

 gerated fear of cow's milk as it is produced and handled at 

 present. This fear, in turn, has led to attempts to substitute 

 for cow's milk other materials and products that in the long 

 run are vastly more inimical to human health in general and 

 to that portion of humanity designated as infancy in particular. 

 It may be held that such statements as the foregoing are dam- 

 aging to the "clean and safe milk" cause, that any responsible 

 officials making such statements are placing themselves in the 

 position of apologists for the cause of dirty and disease pro- 

 ducing milk. Far from it. Such statements simply indicate 

 that the other side of the problem should receive its fair con- 

 sideration. 



Exaggeration of the dangers of milk as they are, an insist- 

 ence upon nonessential, whimsical, illogical, and excessively 

 costly measures of alleged protection of the consumer's milk, 



