THE MILK SITUATION IN THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA. 33 



among employees or other persons associated with them, nor should 

 any such persons be permitted to reside in or visit infected houses 

 while engaged in the milk traffic. 



Dr. Hermann Biggs, of the New York City department of health, 

 like many others, considers it almost impossible to secure a safe milk 

 supply without repeated inspection, including complete and repeated 

 bacteriological examinations of every person connected with the pro- 

 duction and handling of milk. As a result of his report, the New 

 York City board of health has promulgated an order requiring satis- 

 factory pasteurization of all milk used for drinking purposes. 



When we point to the appalling death rate due to typhoid fever, 

 scarlet fever, diphtheria, tuberculosis, and other diseases induced by 

 infection from contaminated milk, we are prone to overlook the vast 

 number of cases in which these attacks of disease do not result fatally. 

 If the mortality which ensues from the lack of proper attention to our 

 milk supply is alarming, how much more so is the enormous amount 

 of illness and distress inflicted by these preventable diseases, and the 

 even more widespread indisposition, exhaustion, and fatigue which 

 should be reckoned as a portion of the awful penalty paid by the 

 community for its lack of prudent care and precaution in the use of 

 milk. In this day of increasing artificiality in our mode of living, 

 when the refinements of civilization are creating greater and con- 

 stantly increasing demands upon our physical and mental energies, 

 every safeguard should be availed of to protect the impaired consti- 

 tution of the individual from the ravages of these ever-portending 

 diseases. Why not, then, instill into every citizen the prime necessity 

 of improving our milk supply (which admittedly plays so important 

 a part in the transmission of disease) until it reaches that standard 

 of practical perfection which will eliminate entirely its character 

 as a destructive agency, and which will insure to the consumer the 

 beneficent advantages of this world-wide product? 



It is earnestly hoped that, through the process of popular education, 

 the prevailing indifference of the average householder to the care of 

 milk will be converted into a proper recognition of the importance of 

 continuing from the hour of its receipt on the threshold to the actual 

 moment of consumption the same degree of cleanliness and mainte- 

 nance at a lower temperature while in the house that is now being 

 demanded of the dairy farmer and milk dealer in its production, 

 transportation, and delivery. 



NUTRITIVE VALUE OF MILK. 



A prejudicial circumstance in the development of the milk industry 

 is the fact that the dairy business has been largely built up on a cheap 

 basis, with cheap cows, cheap feed, cheap stables, cheap labor, and 

 cheap prices for the product. When we compare the price of milk 

 with that of other perishable human foods it is remarkable that so 

 much value is given for so little money, not only from the viewpoint 

 of the abnormal amount of labor and attention* necessarily bestowed 

 in the production and distribution of milk and milk products, but 

 from the standpoint of the amount of nutrition supplied in milk. In 

 other words, if the dairyman could sell the nutrients in his milk for 

 the same price per pound that the butcher receives for the nutrients 



82444 S. Doc. 863, 61-3 3 



