MAINTENANCE OF STANDARD. 169 



' ' No person shall sell, exchange or offer or expose for sale, or exchange 

 as and for ' certified ' milk, any milk which does not conform to the regu- 

 lations prescribed by, and bear the certification of, a Milk Commission 

 appointed by a County Medical Society organized under and chartered by 

 the Medical Society of the State of New York and which has not been 

 pronounced by such authority to be free from antiseptics, added preser- 

 vatives, and pathogenic bacteria or bacteria in excessive numbers. All 

 milk sold as ' certified ' milk shall be conspicuously marked with the name 

 of the Commission certifying it." 



In Kentucky a conviction has been obtained in the Circuit 

 Court, under the state pure food law, on the ground that the 

 fraudulent certified milk had been so advertised as to deceive 

 and defraud the public. It was established that the term ' ' cer- 

 tified milk " had come to have a distinctive meaning. -In Cal- 

 ifornia, the institution of similar proceedings under the pure 

 food and drugs act of that state induced a dairyman to stop 

 the illegitimate use of the phrase. Tuley (13) has discussed 

 this problem thoroughly. 



Infringement in the matter of the use of .the term *' certified 

 milk" cannot do very much harm, for it is a simple matter 

 for a medical milk commission to notify the profession and 

 the public of the fraudulent nature of the claims. 



Maintenance of standard. That the milk produced in a 

 number of certified dairies is really what it is claimed to be by 

 the milk commissions controlling those dairies has been shown 

 in an investigation conducted by the Dairy Division of the 

 U. S. Department of Agriculture. 



Sixteen dairies were visited and scored by a representative 

 of the department. The average score was 93.4 on a scale of 

 100 (perfection). The average score of several details was as 

 follows : Cows, 99.5 ; stable, 87.2 ; milk house, 94.5 ; milking, 

 94.0; handling of milk, 93.0. It should be noted that the 

 high score of the cows was based largely upon credit given for 

 the tuberculin test required by all commissions, but which was 

 not made by the Department of Agriculture. 



Twelve samples of certified milk (four days old) were scored, 

 with an average of 86.0. The bacterial count varied from 280 

 to 19,000 per cc. (8). 



