350 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 
for chemical preservatives and few such cases have been discovered, 
and almost no prosecutions along this line have been undertaken 
within the last twelve months. G. W. Andrews of Burlinffton, Iowa, 
was fined fifty dollars and costs for selling cream containing formal- 
dehyde. It is believed that the use of chemical preservatives is ex- 
tremely infrequent notwithstanding sensational newspaper articles 
to the contrary. 
This department has neither money nor authority to inspect 
farms and herd barns from which milk comes to the fourteen cities 
named above, and hence the inspection has been restricted to samp- 
ling and examining the milk which is offered for sale on the streets 
and in the stores of these cities. It is possible to compel cleanly 
practices on the part of the last handler of the milk or cream, but 
all such efforts are idle and vain if the milk has been produced from 
diseased animals or if it has been kept in unclean cans and thereby 
contaminated with germs, perhaps of disease, and certainly filth. 
Ordinary examination of milk as it comes upon the market does not 
detect unwholesome contamination such as suggested above and 
indeed the detection of unwholesome bacteria in milk is extremely 
difficult and in some cases impossible even in the hands of an ex- 
pert with the best of apparatus at command. 
There has been no considerable improvement in the character of 
the milk supply in these cities during the last several years. While 
there are individual instances of progressive dairymen who have 
taken pains to make sure that their herds are free from disease and 
who have spent money and energy in fitting their barns for the 
production of clean milk, such practices have not been at all gen- 
eral, and very great improvement in this direction could be made 
by voluntary effort on the part of the dairymen. The experience 
of the department has been such as to lead to the belief that such 
improvement is not likely to occur by reason of voluntarj^ effort 
especially in view of the fact that the public very generally declines 
to reward such efforts by increased patronage or by paying higher 
prices for such clean wholesome product. 
During the last several years a very considerable interest has 
been taken by the public in the question of tuberculosis in cows, and 
in general the knowledge of existing conditions has been much in- 
creased during the last twelve months. For example, the Board of 
Control of state institutions has had the state veterinarian test all 
the cows that are kept in connection with the several charitable in- 
stitutions of the state, and the result has shown nearly one-third of 
