CHAPTER VII 

 CONTROL OF THE PUBLIC MILK SUPPLY 



Early Attempts at Control in Europe. Laws were enacted in Europe 

 as early as the middle of the 14th century to prevent the sale of meat of 

 diseased animals but laws to prevent the sale of impure milk came much 

 later. The first English law to deal w th the quality of milk was passed 

 in 1860 and merely prohibited the dilution of milk with water and the use 

 of other substances to conceal such dilution. The first rules to regulate 

 a city milk supply in Scotland were those enforced by the Willowbank 

 Dairy of Glasgow in 1809 and the first in England were those of the 

 Aylesbury Dairy Co. which in 1866 adopted the rules of the Scottish 

 dairy. The Aylesbury Dairy Co. established two grades of milk; one in- 

 cluded the milk that was believed to be fit for direct consumption and the 

 other that which could not be so used and was, therefore, churned to 

 butter. Prior to the establishment of the Aylesbury and other large 

 dairies milk was sold by many men each of whom had but few cows, and 

 standards of his own, consequently the quality of the milk was very vari- 

 able. The concentration of the business into the hands of large com- 

 panies, often of a cooperative character, gradually brought about more 

 uniform conditions and something like standard milk quality. 



. It does not appear that city milk supply in the United States has been 

 directly influenced by the methods of control developed in Europe but the 

 excellent principles of general dairying and dairy manufacturing evolved 

 by the Danes and Dutch are appreciated and the success of the Copen- 

 hagen Milk Supply Co. and the Trifolium Dairy have led American dairy 

 students, visiting Denmark, to study their methods carefully. 



Early Attempts at Control in the United States. In the United States 

 apparently the first law controlling the milk supply was that passed by 

 the State of Massachusetts in 1856 prohibiting the adulteration of milk. 

 The office of Boston Milk Inspector was established in 1859 and in the 

 same year the use of distillery slop as a cattle feed was prohibited. In 

 1864 this law was revised, and the use of milk from diseased cows forbidden. 

 This early Massachusetts legislation is interesting as showing that from 

 an early period there has been a congested population in Boston which 

 it has been difficult to supply with milk. 



The dates at which the more progressive cities of the different sections 

 of the United States undertook the control of their milk supply is shown 

 in Table 114. In Table 115 the facts recorded in Table 114 are summar- 



370 



