554 MILK 



sufficiently. Excellent milk can be produced by good methods 

 with relatively poor equipment, but good milk cannot be pro- 

 duced by poor methods in spite of fine equipment. Therefore, 

 though a good equipment must receive due credit on a score card, 

 methods should be emphasized more than they have been in the 

 past. 



There has been some discussion as to the relation the score 

 of a dairy bears to the bacterial count of the product. It is 

 obvious that there must be some relation, because milk from a 

 filthy dairy with a low score for both equipment and methods 

 naturally would contain more bacteria than milk from a dairy 

 with a high score. On the other hand, it cannot be expected that 

 there be a close relation. Brew, in an investigation of the rela- 

 tion of score and bacterial counts in milk, has found that milk 

 with relatively few bacteria was produced with poor equipment, 

 and with good equipment milk rich in bacterial content was 

 sometimes produced. This implies a criticism of modern score 

 cards which has been mentioned before, namely, that methods 

 are not receiving the recognition they merit, while equipment is 

 somewhat overrated. Perhaps, if methods occupied a relatively 

 large space on the score card, a relation between filthy dairies and 

 bacterial counts would become plainer. However, when a large 

 number of bacterial counts and the corresponding scores are tabu- 

 lated, some sort of relation becomes evident. Lane, Harding, 

 and Gamble have shown this by a comparison of 1392 counts of 

 bacteria from 484 dairies supplying a city of 100,000 population. 

 The data are as follows: 



No. of dairies. Score. Average count. 



47 Over 80 25,000 



46 71 to 80 98,000 



334 61 to 70 352,000 



711 50 to 60 470,000 



254 Below 50 566.000 



A similar view is taken by Kelley, who has expressed his ex- 

 perience in the following words: "It is true that they (the score 

 card and the bacterial count) do not always jibe; furthermore, 

 I am not sure that it is desirable to do so. We often find a man 

 who, because of an exceptional personality, will, with poor equip- 

 ment, still keep the bacterial count of his product at a low figure. 

 . . . Unquestionably, there are instances where a high score 

 may obtain with a high bacterial count, and vice versa, but 

 observation of many farms throughout the country has demon- 

 strated that, as a rule, good conditions on a farm will make for 

 a low bacterial count, and average bad conditions for a high 

 bacterial count." 



