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with the best known pasteurizing plant on the holding system. 

 The electric plant was a so-called flash pasteurizer, while the new 

 one heats the milk for half an hour to a temperature of 145° F., 

 thereby insuring the destruction of all pathogenic micro-organ- 

 isms. The temperature and length of exposure is automatically 

 registered and the record sheet filed daily with Food Commis- 

 sioner Hanson. In a similar way all cream and butter fat mix- 

 tures entering into the manufacture of ice cream, are sterilized 

 at a temperature of 160° F., a fact of importance, since the Rocke- 

 feller Institute found the principal lesions of poliomyelitis to be 

 in the large intestines and surmised that ice cream might be one 

 of the vehicles of infection. 



AVhile nothing but good can be said about this excellent plant 

 of the Dairymen's Association, there is, nevertheless, one sinister 

 aspect to it which I shall take the liberty to lay before you. I 

 have been given to understand that a strenuous fight is going to 

 be made before the next legislature for the purpose of abolishing 

 the efforts of my office at eradicating bovine tuberculosis and sub- 

 stituting compulsory pasteurization of all milk. As stated, there 

 still remain about 2 per cent of tuberculous dairy animals, or 

 there did, at least, before the last test was made; at any rate, 

 sufficient of a nest egg to start the disease spreading again. And 

 while it has taken six years to reduce its prevalence from thirty 

 per cent to two per cent, it may safely be predicted that it would 

 take less than two years for it to regain its former status. It is, 

 of course, possible for a dairyman to keep his herd free of tuber- 

 culous cattle, if he so desires, but when there is no inducement to 

 do so, if pasteurized tuberculous milk is to rank even with clean 

 milk from healthy cows, it is doubtful if many of them will go 

 to the expense and trouble in connection with it. On the other 

 hand, pasteurization cannot always be relied on ; the plant might 

 become incapacitated, and, if even for one day, unpleasant results 

 might follow the consumption of a few thousand gallons of un- 

 pasteurized milk from a lot of diseased cows. I will therefore 

 ask you gentlemen, singly as practising physicians, and as a body 

 through your organizations, to help averting what I believe 

 would be a very poor policy on the part of the dairymen and one 

 far from their own interests. A sick cow cannot furnish the 

 same quality of milk as a healthy one, and I am sure that most of 

 your patients would prefer milk from healthy cows to that from 

 tuberculous animals, even if rendered innocuous by pasteuriza- 

 tion. To terminate the efforts of the Board of Agriculture at 

 eradicating bovine tuberculosis at the present time, when a large 

 majority of the diseased animals have already been disposed of 

 and the possibility of their transmitting a fatal disease to the 

 children, whose welfare it is our solemn duty to protect, can be 

 viewed only as a step in the wrong direction. And what of the 

 seventy or eighty dairymen who have already cleaned their herds 

 of tuberculous animals? A barbed wire fence is poor protection 

 against the badly infected tuberculous herd of a next-door neigh- 



