CONTROL OF THE PUBLIC MILK SUPPLY 453 



ment of milk control of the exclusion but often there is no such board 

 with authority or the resources to prevent the shipment of the milk. 

 Generally the best plan of protection is for neighboring communities 

 to adopt an arrangement for promptly notifying each other of the exclu- 

 sion of any dairy from one of the cities. Some go further and exchange 

 their weekly reports upon communicable disease. 



Methods of Maintaining Public Interest in the Milk Supply. These 

 are the principal lines along which efforts at milk control are directed. 

 There remain to be considered means of maintaining interest in the milk 

 situation and of making the milk inspection bureau serviceable to the 

 community. Carefully considered and well-directed publicity is the 

 agent for accomplishing these things. Newspapers generally gladly 

 assist temperate constructive campaigns for improving the milk supply. 

 The rural press will usually accept short articles on such subjects as 

 cow-testing associations, bull associations, the handling of manure, 

 feeding, the production of clean milk and the like. Often country and 

 city papers will publish dairy scores. In a community where control 

 work is new it is well to begin with publishing only the good scores. This 

 excites the interest of the farmers and is an incentive to those whose 

 places are in poor condition to improve them. Ultimately the scores 

 of all the farms can be published. The question of whether chemical 

 and bacteriological milk analyses should be published and the supplies 

 of all the dealers rated has excited discussion. The first question that 

 presents itself is whether the publication of analyses is legal; in com- 

 munities where it is not, the matter is ended. Those who oppose publish- 

 ing analyses contend that to do so is unfair to the dealer because the con- 

 sumers are unable to understand them and so are confused and often 

 misled by them. Those who would publish analyses feel that the public 

 pays for all the analytical work and so is entitled to know how the different 

 supplies may be judged in accordance with it. Montclair, N. J., and 

 other cities have long published both the chemical and bacteriological 

 analyses of the milk of all the dealers in their annual reports. This by 

 many is considered fair because it shows the general character of the 

 supplies over a considerable period of time. Others regard this as stale 

 news and believe that few consumers use it. This latter criticism cer- 

 tainly is not valid in Montclair. In some cities the analyses are published 

 in the daily press right after they are made. The objection to this is 

 that an opinion in regard to a milk supply should never be formed on a 

 single analysis and that in the best-managed dairies accidents will happen 

 that might cause an occasional analysis to misrepresent completely the 

 real character of the supply. It is truly held that the regular publication 

 of analyses makes it unnecessary to adopt a bacterial standard because 

 dealers will strive to get lower counts than their competitors and so milks 

 with high counts will gradually decrease in number and the average maxi- 



