Part II.] UILK INSPECTION. 77 



quality. Unfortunately this titration standard serves merely to 

 indicate the fact that the milk will soon become bad, but does 

 not serve to distinguish between good and medium milk. Be- 

 cause of these limitations to titration standards, attention in 

 recent years has been directed toward bacterial counts as 

 standards of milk quality. It is interesting to note that during 

 the vogue of each of the standards already discussed, they have 

 been used by at least a portion of the inspectors as practically 

 complete standards of milk quality. Bacterial standards are 

 no exception to this rule. Many have confused the presence of 

 large numbers of bacteria with the probable presence of disease 

 germs. I take it that all of you are familiar with the fact that 

 the ordinary methods of determining bacterial counts throw 

 absolutely no light upon the presence of disease germs. The 

 mere presence of large numbers of bacteria in milk has been 

 taken by some as sufficient evidence that the milk is unwhole- 

 some. On the other hand, it is coming to be a fairh' universal 

 custom to consume as health-giving beverages milk drinks con- 

 taining millions per cubic centimeter of the very organisms 

 which characterize commercial sour milk. The majority of us 

 are conservative enough to think that for baby feeding, at least, 

 milk should be preferably of a low germ content. However, one 

 needs to experience but a few controversies between the baby 

 specialists who champion high and low bacterial milks, respec- 

 tively, before deciding that it is better not to be dogmatic even 

 on this phase of the subject. 



Recognizing that quantitative bacterial content standards bear 

 no direct relation to the healthfulness of milk, many efl'orts 

 have been made to find some qualitative bacterial standards 

 which might serve this purpose. B. coli standards similar to 

 those used in water work were early illustrations of such eft'orts. 

 The recognition that B. coli is a constant inhabitant of even 

 the most scrupulously clean milk, and may easily increase in 

 such milk to high numbers, destroyed its usefulness as a 

 standard of healthfulness or cleanliness. Other attempts have 

 likewise failed, so that at present we do not have either quan- 

 titative or qualitative standards of bacterial content which 

 throw much light upon the healthfulness of milk. 



There is perhaps no belief regarding bacteria which has been 



