MILK SUPPLY : DISCUSSION 227 



cannot comply with the standard. Fortunately there is also 

 a Wholesale Milk Producers' Association, and it replied with 

 an official letter stating that the producers could supply milk 

 up to the standard fixed by law. As a result the opposition 

 has given out, and the people are getting better milk. A 

 low standard is an invitation to adulteration and sophistica- 

 tion, watering or skimming. No honest milk producer need 

 fear such a law, because the appeal to the cow could be 

 resorted to if necessary. Personally, he thought it would 

 be well if farmers, public health authorities, and others 

 to-day looked upon milk as a product of human art instead 

 of as a mere product of Nature of course he did not mean 

 a product of the adulterator's art; what he referred to was 

 the fact that artificial selection had practically entirely 

 replaced natural selection in the case of the domestic ani- 

 mals. As a consequence, the quality of the milk, like the 

 quantity, was largely determined by human action. Men 

 would breed cows for poor milk if a low standard were 

 fixed. They would not cull their herds. It had to be remem- 

 bered that feeding had relatively little effect on the quality of 

 milk. The rule should be to breed for quality and feed for 

 quantity of milk. If widespread and proper sampling of 

 milk were carried out in this country it would probably prove 

 practicable to approach the Government with irrefutable 

 data, justifying a standard of at least 3*3 per cent, of fatty 

 solids; perhaps they might see their way to a 3*5 per cent, 

 standard. 



Mr. ROBERT LAMBIE (Lanarkshire) said he was delighted 

 with the remarks of the last speaker, because he believed 

 that if local authorities exercised the powers they at present 

 possessed they would have better milk both as regarded 

 quality and quantity. Local authorities had the power to 

 give technical and scientific education, and the man who 

 wanted to take the most out of the land in the days that 

 were to come must be a scientist, and a scientist of no mean 

 order, and they as members of local authorities had the 

 power to place that knowledge within his reach, and it was 

 their duty as local authorities to do so. He was one of 

 those who believed that the farmer should be held respon- 

 sible for the quality of the milk that he supplied the market 

 with. The farmer should be held responsible both for the 

 purity and the quality of the milk he sold, and if he took 

 advantage of the scientific knowledge that was placed within 

 his reach, and that they as local authorities were bound to 

 place within his reach if they carried out the duties that the 

 law 'had entrusted to them, then the quality and the purity 

 of the milk as far as the farmer was concerned reste.d with 



