186 Eepokt of Farmers' Institutes 



MILK STANDARDS IN NEW YORK STATE 

 George A. Smith and Professor H. E. Ross 



The question of what should be the standards for market milk, 

 sold as such to the consumer, has been a live one for a great many 

 years. In the early history of the trade, during which time it 

 gradually grew from the one-cow family supply to a supply from 

 which several neighbors were furnished, there was no special 

 demand for regulation of its distribution. 



As the outside supply increased, and milk was transported 

 from greater distances and went through more hands before it 

 reached the ultimate consumer, conditions became less satisfactory 

 and complaints of adulteration more frequent. From these com- 

 plaints arose a realization that some restrictive laws should be 

 passed to protect the urban consumers from the adulteration of the 

 supply furnished them. The determination of quality and the 

 detection of adulteration was at that time much more difficult 

 than now, since the invention of the Babcock test. Then it was 

 the work of a trained chemist and took considerable time, making 

 it necessarily expensive. For that reason the average person did 

 not know much about the quality of the milk furnished him, and 

 it was not an article of familv use to anv such extent as at the 

 present time. 



When it came to passing a law which should state the per- 

 centage of butter fat and other solids not fat that should con- 

 stitute legal milk, there immediately arose a marked difference 

 of opinion as to what that standard should be. The consumer 

 wanted good clean milk of good quality. The producer said that 

 he could not afford to furnish a high grade milk at the price he 

 was receiving. The outcome of all the discussion at that time 

 was that chemists were set at work to find how poor a quality of 

 milk an individual cow would produce under normal conditions. 

 The producer said it would be an injustice to have standards 

 placed so high that some of his cows would produce illegal milk. 

 When an agreement was reached and a law passed it was in the 

 nature of a compromise between the producer and the consumer, 

 and the consumer got the worst of the bargain. The standard 



