170 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



prices are paid, may be closely imitated on this side of the 

 water. Indeed, a few New York and Wisconsin factories 

 are to-day making several cheeses practically identical with 

 the imported article. 



(e) Character of Products (i. e., quality). — The best 

 of cows, be they fed ever so well, their milk sold as such or 

 made into butter, cheese or what not, avail not in the 

 struggle to meet western competition if the quality of the 

 final product be inferior. Our western cousins have made 

 rapid strides in this respect in recent years. The advantages 

 already enumerated, particularly the educational ones, have 

 been important factors in this advancement. The superi- 

 ority of New England dairy products no longer stands un- 

 questioned. It remains, therefore, for us to put forth every 

 effort to improve what is already good. We must gild 

 refined gold, — the lily shall be painted. How is this to be 

 brought about? I know of no one thing more potent for ill 

 in this matter than the bacterial content of the milk furnished 

 by the different patrons of a creamery, cheese factory or 

 milk car. Other considerations, such as character of feed, 

 stage of lactation, method of handling, etc., enter in to 

 aft'ect the quality of the product, — factors which would be 

 well worth our attention, did time and space permit. I 

 should distinctly fail in my duty, however, if I neglected to 

 refer to the vital relation of the germ content of milk to its 

 usefulness in dairy operations. 



I need not tell this audience the now trite story of the 

 bacterium, how its growth and multiplication in milk causes 

 the familiar souring, how sometimes desirable aromas, some- 

 times disagreeable flavors, are developed by its growth, or 

 how certain diseases may be at times communicated through 

 its presence in the milk. It is proved beyond doubt that 

 the control of the bacterial content of milk is the great 

 desideratum of modern dairy management. Exclusion, 

 destruction and retardation should be the watch-words. 

 Keep them out, kill them out, check their growth. How 

 may this be most certainly yet simply accomplished ? Clean- 

 liness and sanitation tend to keep them out ; live steam, 

 sunlight, sterilization, pasteurization, disinfection, kill them 

 out ; and refrigeration serves best to check their growth. 



