272 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



when there is an epidemic of tallc about our foods and a lot of people 

 have gone nearly crazy about pure foods; there are a few who have 

 slandered the food products of this country and in particular the product 

 which you people make has not escaped the slanders of people whose 

 supposed education and position and ability to be posted are not so great 

 as they might seem to be. You have perhaps recently seen in some news- 

 papers the story that butter is one of the filthiest articles that goes on 

 the table. Perhaps I had better read just what was said: 



"Butter is fit only to be the food of scavengers. This is said of 

 most of the butter which is consumed in this country." 



The article, which I will not read altogether, proceeds to say that 

 milk is afflicted with germs of tuberculosis and various other germs. 

 When the cream is skimmed from that milk all those germs go into the 

 cream, and when the cream is churned into butter they are all there so 

 that there is an extraordinary number of germs in the butter and hence 

 butter is the filthiest article of food we have. The contrary is the fact. 

 You people know well that you put in the cream germs for the purpose 

 of ripening the cream; you not only accept those that are there, but you 

 add to them, so the statement is true in a sense that there are millions 

 of bacteria in the butter. The mistake that the scientific gentleman made 

 when he wrote the article was to assume that all of us are so ignorant 

 as to fancy that all bacteria must be classed with vermin, parasites, or 

 other undesirable citizens of that kind. The thing you do to cream, 

 when you inoculate it with the proper kind of plant to develop the 

 flavor j^ou desire, is exactly the same as the housewife and bakers do 

 when they mix the bread and add the yeast. When the bread is ready to 

 go into the oven and the butter to come from the churn they are alike, 

 for they are full of bacteria, and if one is filthy so is the other. The 

 trouble is that bacteria is not an element of filth, but rather the contrary. 



The learned writer suggests also that butter is the vehicle of germs of 

 tuberculosis and other diseases. It is unfortunately true that a great 

 deal of milk comes from tubercular animals, and not enough has been 

 done in the way of regulating that situation. It is true sometimes these 

 germs get into the butter, but every student in bacteria knows that butter 

 is not a medium in which bacteria can live. Bacteria require nitrogen 

 for their existence, and there is little or no nitrogen in butter, and the 

 scientific fact of the matter is that whereas when butter is churned it is 

 full of lactic acid bacteria, and perhaps a few disease bacteria which may 

 have got in, at the end of two or three days there are almost no live 

 bacteria at all. The fact is the same as it is in regard to the bread. 

 The bread goes into the oven swarming with bacteria, good bacteria, 

 the bacteria of yeast, but the heat destroys them. The butter is manu- 

 factured and has in it a tremendous quantity of bacteria, lactic acid 

 bacteria, but the impossibility of their existence there destroys them 

 within a very few days, so that the butter is almost or absolutely sterile. 

 These are facts which bacteriologists have established hundreds of times 

 and it does not require any expert knowledge of the subject to discover 

 this. So that butter, instead of being the most unwholesome article of 

 food, is one of the most wholesome articles of food we have on the market, 

 so you may all go home with a clear conscience and sleep, knowing that 



