Society appointed a Milk Commission to set standards for fresh milk. The Pure 

 Milk Law of 1915, which regulated conditions in which butter could be made, 

 requiring pasteurization of cream, resulted in the formation of the Point Reyes 

 Dairymen's Association and its Point Reyes Cooperative Creamery, built that 

 year in Point Reyes Station. This act ended the manufacture of commercial 

 butter on the ranches. Most dairymen from the Olema Valley trucked their 

 cream to the creamery where it was processed into butter, cheese, condensed 

 milk, dry milk powder, and casein. 104 



The Department of Agriculture succeeded the State Dairy Bureau in 

 1919, creating a Division of Animal Industry that regulated dairying, livestock 

 identification, disease control, meat inspection, and tuberculosis control. In 

 1924 the Dairy Service of the Division of Animal Control became a separate 

 branch within the Department of Agriculture, called the Bureau of Dairy 

 Control, which operated until it was dissolved in 1933. In 1920, the Marin 

 County Farm Bureau established an office in San Rafael and M. B. Boissevain 

 was appointed as the county Farm Advisor. Under the auspices of University of 

 California at Berkeley, established as an agricultural land-grant college, the 

 farm advisor traveled to all of the farms in Marin County and shared the 

 newest information from the scientific and agricultural community. Boissevain 

 worked with the ranchers to improve the herd's health and production, feed 

 quality and crop methods, erosion and range management, and sanitation 

 problems. The farm advisor also participated in 4-H organizations throughout 

 the county, and helped establish a local chapter of Future Farmers of 

 America. 105 



These various regulatory agencies established sanitary standards for 

 ranches and creameries, including construction specifications for milking barns, 

 and performed tests on the purity of the milk as it came out of the cow. The 

 dairy tester was a common visitor to any California dairy. He would check the 

 milk for impurities and disease and measure butterfat content. The state 

 began to certify dairies in the early 1920s, a process that eventually resulted in 

 the A and B grading system. 



104 Marin Journal. February 22, 1906; Mason, Historian, pp. 736-737; interviews with Joe 

 Mendoza, Boyd Stewart. 



105 Elsey Hurt, California State Government. An Outline of its Administrative Organization 

 from 1850 to 1936 (Sacramento: Superintendent of Documents, 1936), pp. 12, 17; Abbott, North 

 Bay Dairylands. pp. 15-16; Marin Journal. September 30, 1920. 



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