CO-OPERATION 131 



places a greater pecuniary burden upon the community, which has 

 to entertain the inspecting and controlling staff, it is not much of a 

 tax upon milk producers. For a pasteurising plant, which is the 

 main expense, costs very little. Seeing at what rate the sale of 

 milk has gone up, and in what proportion the guaranteed milk 

 fetches better prices, the small outlay for the producer can scarcely 

 come into account. The benefit to the community, on the other 

 hand, is evidently well worth the outlay incurred by the inspection 

 and control imposed. Apart from a considerable reduction of deaths 

 and cases of illness, it provides for the community a healthy next 

 generation by the access given to pure and good milk, which en- 

 courages parents to provide a larger supply of a most health-giving 

 food to the growing population. 



The remedies applied, of course, include the inspection of shops, 

 cow-houses — now replaced by highly modernised "barns," in which 

 cleanliness is most carefully studied — the persons coming into 

 contact with the cows or the milk and so on. There is, in fact, 

 nothing left uninspected. Physical impurities are detected with the 

 help of the Wisconsin disc-test, under which treatment a part of the 

 milk to be examined is passed through a disc of cotton wool, which, 

 of course, retains the impurities and tells by the depth of the colour 

 imparted to the wool what the proportion of impurities is. Some 

 discs come out very dark indeed. Dealers are required to take out 

 a " permit," without which the sale of milk — save in very small 

 quantities — is not allowed, and which commit them, under threat of 

 heavy penalties, to the observance of sundry safeguards ; a whole 

 number of them are set down on a card. Those safeguards include 

 cleanliness in the surroundings and the people handling the cows, 

 sterilisation of the utensils used, the use of pails or buckets with 

 narrow openings, about T V of the ordinary width, to exclude the 

 danger of dirt, or dust, or impurities from milkers and attendants, 

 or loose hairs of the animals dropping in — the last-named con- 

 stituting, as has been found, a favourite settling place for bacteria. 

 Above all things, pasteurisation at a prescribed temperature of 

 105° F., with immediate cooling down to 50° or 60° F. following, is 

 insisted upon. In New York now about 90 per cent, of the total 

 milk sold is pasteurised ; in Toronto as good as all. And the milk 

 issuing from such process has to be sold in either bottles or else 

 sealed containers. The sale of " loose " milk is entirely interdicted. 



In Toronto, so Dr. Navington writes me, " in general, we have 

 achieved our object well. The milk sold is pasteurised, is perfectly 

 safe, is of good quality and has, as a consequence, resulted in a 



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