NEW YORK MILK COMMITTEE 73 



ket milk, to form a deposit, visible to the unaided eye, after 

 the milk stands a short time in the containers in which it is 

 sold. The examination of milk itself and the sediment that 

 can be obtained from it in centrifuge tubes should be suffi- 

 cient to determine whether it is equal to or falls below a sat- 

 isfactory standard of cleanliness. 



The elimination from commerce of milk that contains more 

 than a reasonable permissible maximum of foreign matter is a 

 question of inspection applied to cows, dairy-barns, milk 

 houses, milkers, utensils, etc. 



Bacteria-laden milk, omitting the fact, since I have al- 

 ready spoken about dirty milk, that an excessive bacterial 

 content often is the direct outgrowth of an excessive amount of 

 filth, may be of two kinds ; that which has not been properly 

 cooled and kept at a low temperature, and that which has been 

 kept too long after it was produced. In other words, warm 

 milk and stale milk. 



Bacteria-laden milk must be dealt with through bacterial 

 counts, and I believe this can be done if we do not insist on 

 counts numerically too low. A standard could be established 

 for different climates and different seasons of the year by 

 making a large number of counts with milk from a number of 

 different dealers, known through inspection to have been pro- 

 duced, handled at every stage, and distributed under eco- 

 nomically practicable and satisfactory conditions. 



If the bacterical count cannot be economically kept below a 

 reasonable maximum, a maximum below which milk becomes a 

 source of abdominal diseases among infants which make the 

 first two years of human life the period of highest mortality, 

 then we will have to resort to pasteurization as the only, im- 

 mediately available, sufficiently inexpensive, reliable expedient. 



We now come to infected milk, and by this term I wish to 

 designate the kind of milk that is contaminated with specific 

 agents of communicable diseases. 



Dirty and bacteria-laden milk are closely related, because 

 the conditions that facilitate the introduction of extraneous 

 substances, which invariably contain germs, into milk, are akin 

 to the carelessness in handling which facilitates the rapid 

 multiplication of bacteria. But infected milk is, strictly 

 speaking, a separate and distinct product. No doubt dirty 



