EXPERIMENT STATION BULLETINS. 627 



MILK INSPECTION. 



One of the first signs that milk was looked upon in a different way 

 from other foods by the city, consumer, was the wide-spread adoption 

 of city ordinances a few 3'ears ago, fixing the village and city qualifica- 

 tions which milk must have in order to be salable within city limits. 

 The Health Board of Detroit began the oversight of this matter shortly 

 after the residents of the city ceased to velj upon their own cows for a 

 milk supply but it was not until 1911 that a well worked out plan of 

 milk inspection was given effect. City dealers were licensed for the 

 first time by the Board of Health upon this date and a United States 

 score card for dairymen was adopted and enforced upon the thousands 

 of country producers. 



The fact that milk is generally consumed raw has made the matter 

 of its purity vastly imijortant to the consumer, wherever this food has 

 become an article of diet. Adulterations of various sorts made up its 

 first general abuse, but these gave up in the main to the skill of the 

 Babcock test in separating out the genuine parts of the milk from the 

 fraudulent or added parts. Harmful preservatives came next and had 

 their share in damaging the food value of milk, but these have long 

 since been overthrown by chemical tests, until formaldehyde and its 

 allies have no further menace to clean milk. 



The infectiousness of milk has also been one of its weak sides. The 

 capacitj^ to carry tubercular germs which Koch found to be true in the 

 late nineties proved a powerful check to the use of fluid milk, until the 

 findings of the tuberculin test at last curbed everywhere the danger of 

 harm from this source. But the liability of milk to infection from 

 almost everj^ bacilli evil which it touched, made it still a carrier of 

 typhoid, scarlet fever and small-pox germs until the service of pasteur- 

 ization robbed these dangers of their threat. As late, indeed, as 1914 

 Detroit had not seen the way clear to require pasteurization for its 

 entire milk supply, but with the spring of 1915 this requirement was 

 enforced. The last pure milk triumph is the mastery of other possible 

 sources of contamination through the use of clean milk receptacles, clean 

 methods in the dairy and small topped pails in the stables, through the 

 use of bottles in delivery and above all by the use of the ''bacterial count", 

 and sediment test whereby dirt is at once discovered and its amount 

 measured and quantitatively stated. 



These precautions and safeguards must all be got by wise laws and 

 active care on the part of public authority. The state of Michigan has 

 passed laws defining milk and fixing penalties for its abuse but the use 

 of these laws in the area under discussion rests with the Detroit Board 

 of Health. Fortunately, this body through its directing specialists and 

 staff of inspectors is well equipped for bringing the milk used in Detroit 

 up to acceptable modern standards. 



