SANITARY MILK PRODUCTION 167 



the utensils and high counts of acid-forming colonies are likely to lead 

 to inquiries as to the care given the dairy utensils. Hunziker states that 

 very common sources of bacteria of the butyric acid group, that are so 

 likely to spoil condensed milk, are cheese-cloth strainers and utensils. 



Utensils are sometimes seeded with bacteria that are derived from 

 impure waters in which they are washed and occasionally considerable 

 loss arises from these germs causing ropy milk or imparting bad flavors 

 to milk and butter. Some epidemics have been attributed to the wash- 

 ing of utensils in infected water. The water supply of the dairy is 

 important. 



The Water Supply of the Dairy Farm. A dairy farm requires an 

 abundant, supply of pure water. There are two reasons for protecting 

 it from contamination, namely: (1) fecal pollutions may infect the 

 water with bacteria and animal parasites that cause diseases of stock 

 or more likely of man; and (2) impure water may carry germs of 

 various sorts that cause ropy or ill-flavored milk or that impart bad 

 flavors to butter and other manufactured dairy products. Most writers 

 distinguish between polluted or contaminated water and infected water, 

 the first and second terms being applied to waters that have picked 

 up impurities of various sorts that are not necessarily harmful to health, 

 but the third term is restricted to waters that contain the specific germs 

 of disease. Water that is open to contamination is so to infection. 

 How is it then that many families regularly use polluted water without 

 apparent ill effects except, that diarrheas may be occasionally attributed 

 to the water? The answer is that the contaminating filth whether it 

 is of excremental or of less objectionable origin does not contain the 

 germs of disease. But families often do suffer from minor ills for which 

 the impure water is responsible and they live in constant danger, for 

 at any time infection may be introduced through the same channels 

 that the relatively innocuous filth traverses. Thus a privy that has long 

 leached into a well without sickening the users of the water may bring 

 them down with typhoid fever as the result of its having been used by a 

 typhoid bacillus carrier or by one afflicted with the fever. 



Hitherto farmers have paid little heed to the protection of the purity 

 of their water supplies. For this there are two principal reasons, the 

 first being that many of the wells were built before our present knowledge 

 of the causation of disease was current, and the second that the effect 

 on health of using polluted drinking water is not always apparent. The 

 aged grandfather lives on despite his daily dose of diluted dejecta; the 

 infant that died of " bowel complaint" is not present to, protest the old 

 man's scoffing at the germ theory. Convenience has naturally played 

 a determining part in locating the farm well. The result is that regard- 

 less of conditions that obviously threaten, it holds its place midway 

 between the kitchen and the barn. 



