392 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



ordinary creamery. It is believed that the manager and butter- 

 maker can, if they use sufficient vigor and tact control the deliv- 

 ery of milk and cream. At any rate there are plenty of cream- 

 eries where they are doing it successfully, the advancement of qual- 

 ity reported seems to indicate that such success is more general 

 than heretofore admitted. But there is still great need for con- 

 tinued effort on the part of the creamery management to improve 

 the quality of their product. 



Some effort was made to interest the legislature in some remedial 

 legislation, or that which would make more definite the criminal 

 laws now on the statute books relative to selling to a creamery 

 milk or cream that is unwholesome or filthy but nothing was seri- 

 ously considered. It is not at all probable that any legislature will 

 enact a law that will enable a state official to have a patron fined 

 for delivering cream that is simply not the best, and the law we 

 have now is strong enough for food products. There is a wide 

 difference between cream that is unwholesome and that which is 

 the ideal of the buttermaker. The cream may be too sour, or have 

 bad flavors or odors or the cans may not be ideally clean and the 

 cream still not unwholesome in the sense that it would make any- 

 one sick or that it is dirty or filthy. Such " cream would be un- 

 desirable but it is too much to believe that the general assembly 

 will ever make it a criminal offense for a farmer to bring such 

 cream to the factory. The improvement of quality must be done 

 by the creamery managers, and by the buttermakers, through edu- 

 cation and instruction and refusal to take that which does not 

 meet the approval of the management. Fines and penalties will 

 be reserved for those who bring cream that is decomposed or filthy. 



A group of creameries, most of them in Worth county, have 

 organized for the purpose of employing an expert, who is to go 

 among the creameries and their patrons and work for quality of 

 raw material, increase in quantity of it, the use of better methods 

 of caring for and feeding cows, and in general the upbuilding of 

 the dairy industry' so far as it is connected with the ten or twelve 

 creameries in the organization. The expense will probably be 

 about five or six cents a tub of butter and the results and advan- 

 tages will far outweigh that small expense. The success of this 

 movement will be watched with great satisfaction and there will 

 doubtless be many other such organizations in the near future. 

 Theoretically this movement is in the right direction. The cream- 

 eries of this state may expect the state to enforce laws, to assist in 



