NEW YORK MILK COMMITTEE 161 



its proper function when it attempts to punish a man for the 

 sale of a "natural product," "just as nature produced it." 

 The modern cow is not a natural product but the result of an 

 evolution. A milk producer can,, within certain limitations, 

 have any kind of milk he desires, so far as amount of food 

 material in it is concerned. If he starts out with an inten- 

 tion to produce 14* per cent milk he can select a herd which 

 will produce 14 per cent milk. The same is true as regards 

 IS per cent and other milks. If then a producer deliberately 

 selects a herd which will produce milk below in food material 

 what the law says is an allowable minimum, I see no hard- 

 ship in his being prosecuted therefor. I believe that the stand- 

 ard should be high enough to keep from the market milk low- 

 est in food value. A very low standard is to that extent no 

 standard. 



Second. As to foreign substances, nothing need be said as 

 no one defends milk doped with embalming substances, or pol- 

 luted with cow manure. 



Third. As to the bacteriological standard, the objection is 

 sometimes made that it does not discriminate between desirable 

 and undesirable bacteria; but I hazard the assertion that all 

 forms of bacteria are undesirable in sweet market milk; fur- 

 thermore, many of the so-called good and bad kinds of bac- 

 teria are intimately associated, and if milk contains large num- 

 bers, the presumption is that many of them are of the bad 

 kind. The dirtier the milk the more bacteria. An excessive 

 number of bacteria means bad conditions in producing or 

 handling, therefore a bacteriological standard is justifiable. 

 As bacteria multiply rapidly in warm milk a temperature 

 standard is a valuable assistant in helping to keep milk within 

 the proper limits bacteriologically. 



Fourth. My suggestion for both a bacteriological stand- 

 ard and a score card standard may be criticised on the ground 

 that at the last analysis both mean the same thing. This 

 may perhaps be correct where conditions warrant frequent 

 bacteriological tests of milk. Where milk from a given herd 

 can be examined regularly every week or two, if it prove uni- 

 form in number of bacteria, the probabiltiy is that the bac- 

 teria counts and the score card results will confirm each other. 

 But usually it is not feasible to make such frequent investi- 



