172 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



that would increase the sales of their milk and give them such 

 a steady market and a guaranteed market as to be in favor of 

 pasteurization, because it is the only life insurance the industry 

 has got. No man can tell what day his industry will be ruined 

 through an epidemic, and I have been surprised that the dairy 

 farmers have been so shortsighted as to think that the pas- 

 teurization of milk was antagonistic to their industry. If you 

 will talk to men in New York who are familiar with this 

 operation they will tell you that nothing so increases the sale 

 of milk and gives it such a solid foundation as this little 

 finishing touch that can be put on milk irrespective of its 

 sanitary character. We want it as clean as we can get it, and 

 then we want it guaranteed against disease. 



Mr. NiCKERSON. I would like to ask Dr. North, for the pro- 

 ducer who sells his milk at retail, who disposes of it all within 

 fifteen or sixteen hours from the time it is produced, whether 

 pasteurization is needed? I produce about 200 quarts myself, 

 and the pasteurization of that, I think, would probably be 

 prohibitive, and I want to ask whether it is as necessary as 

 it is where it is shipped to cities and is a few days old, because 

 there are a large number of us in this State who sell our own 

 milk straight from our own dairies, and no other. 



Dr. North. Small and inexpensive machines are now made 

 to pasteurize such a small quantity as 200 quarts and even less, 

 so that any producer and dealer can pasteurize milk on a 

 small scale at very small expense, and it seems to me that 

 even in a business of that size, where the milk is fresher and 

 has not been subjected to the multiplication of bacteria that 

 comes with age, nevertheless it is exposed to a cow that may 

 have an infectious disease; it is exposed to an employee who 

 may be a typhoid carrier or a diphtheria carrier any minute; 

 and I have personally investigated numerous epidemics of this 

 disease — I need only mention Poughkeepsie, in which we have 

 500 people down from scarlet fever traceable to one dairy farm 

 infected by one employee who only had a sore throat, as he 

 called it, and the city of Poughkeepsie was subjected to a 

 terrible epidemic caused by men who did not believe in pas- 

 teurization and by boards of health who did not believe in 

 pasteurization; but they all believe in it now. 



