146 Milk and Its Products 



would seem, therefore, that the best means of regulat- 

 ing the traffic in milk would be, not to set up an 

 artificial standard to which all must come, but to 

 require each individual dealer to guarantee his own 

 standard, and hold him responsible if his milk were 

 found below. In this way it would be possible to 

 sell milk of various qualities, from strictly skimmed 

 to heavy cream, upon a graduated scale of prices, 

 with exact justice to every one. 



Cream for consumption. Since the introduction of 

 the centrifugal separator, the use of cream as an 

 article of diet and for household purposes has very 

 rapidly increased, and the amount of cream so used 

 now represents a very considerable proportion of the 

 total production of milk. The sale of cream to con- 

 sumers is usually carried on in connection with the 

 sale of milk, and the conditions of care and cleanli- 

 ness necessary in the one case apply equally well to 

 the other. Cream, however, is much more generally 

 delivered in bottles than is milk, and since the daily 

 quantity used is smaller, there is a greater demand 

 that it should keep sweet for a longer time. For this 

 reason it is still more important that cream should be 

 kept, so far as possible, free from contamination with 

 germs of fermentation, and at a comparatively low 

 temperature from the time it leaves the separator 

 till it goes into the consumer's hands; and of course 

 the fresher and freer from germs the milk is when 

 separated, the better will be the keeping qualities of 

 the resulting cream. Milk containing more than .2 per 

 cent of lactic acid should not be used for the pro- 



