THE SANITARY FACTORS 69 



The general practical weakness of certified milk is 

 that it demands multifarious precautions to obtain a 

 result which, as we shall show later, appears to be 

 obtainable by much simpler and less expensive means. 



It must also be remarked that medical milk com- 

 missions have undertaken, through practical exigency, 

 a function of supervision which properly pertains to 

 the public health authorities. While they have served, 

 and continue to serve, a useful purpose, it is a fact that, 

 as official control becomes better and better developed, 

 the value of such unofficial or quasi-official bodies 

 diminishes toward the vanishing point. It is simply 

 an evidence of deficient development in public health 

 protection that in many communities certified milk 

 is the only milk distinguished as a standardized class 

 from the bulk of the market product, and that in many 

 more others there is no milk at all of such definite char- 

 acterization. 



While the highest ideal of clean milk has been at- 

 tained in certified milk, which is therefore of a high 

 degree of safety, it must be remembered that absolute 

 freedom from possibility of infection is not guaranteed 

 by this ideal. This, as we shall see later, is the general 

 weakness of the clean milk ideal; no milk, even the 

 most " clean," can be called perfectly safe that has not 

 been pasteurized. 



THE GENERAL CLEAN MILK MOVEMENT 



Certified milk established a standard which has 

 been the ideal of the whole clean milk movement. 

 This movement, originated thus by unofficial endeavor 

 and taken up by health authorities, sought to attain 



