CLEAN MILK 149 



commissions permit producers to date their certificates 

 with the day of bottling. This has less value to the con- 

 sumer than the date of production. Other commissions 

 permit the certificates to be stamped with the date on 

 which the milk is to be consumed. This is of practically 

 no value at all, especially in the case of milk intended for 

 ocean shipments, which, not infrequently, is consumed 

 two weeks or longer after it is bottled. To require the cer- 

 tificate to be dated with the date of production may work 

 a hardship upon farmers at a distance. Certified milk, if 

 anything, should be fresh milk, and the producer is en- 

 titled to know its age when he receives it. To my thinking, 

 special importance should be laid upon the fact that all 

 milk should be fresh and that certified milk should be as 

 fresh as it is possible to obtain it, and I will welcome the 

 day when the health laws throughout the country will re- 

 quire the dating of all milk based upon the time of produc- 

 tion. Recently I have found a March certificate on a May 

 bottle of milk. This may have been due to carelessness 

 of the bottler or to dereliction of the commission. Such 

 occurrences are unfortunate. The certificate must mean 

 just what it says or it is not worth the paper it is printed 

 upon. 



The producer. The producer, after all, is the most im- 

 portant person in the whole certified milk movement. It is 

 important to encourage producers to come into the certified 

 milk movement and to help them so that they may stay in 

 once they have taken this advanced step. The man behind 

 the guns is the real factor in producing good milk. The 

 producer, on his part, should be frank and open with the 

 commission, should come to the commission with his trou- 

 bles, and thus mutual respect and helpfulness will pervade 

 the entire certified milk movement. 



Some of the producers of certified milk have actually 

 done what the scientists regarded as an impossibility. Thus 

 Mr. Stewart, at Brookside Farm on the Hudson, produces 



