REGULATION OF PRODUCTION 169 



medical profession and to the public than any statement 

 regarding the precise number of bacteria in the milk 

 upon any given day or days. The most important 

 things, after all, are such a regime as shall make con- 

 tamination by pathogenic organisms improbable, and 

 at the same time insure that the milk is produced under 

 such conditions of cleanliness that other bacterial con- 

 taminations will be reduced to the minimum. " L. P.] 



a. The condition of health of the herd. The ideal 

 requirement that only milk from a perfectly healthy 

 herd may be marketed, cannot be maintained. The pub- 

 lic, therefore, must be satisfied to demand that the health . 

 condition of the herd is such that its milk does not pos- 

 sess injurious qualities. If infectious diseases which are 

 transmissible, through milk, to man, break out in the 

 herd, the sale of the milk should be forbidden as long as 

 danger of infection be present. If individual cases of 

 infectious or other diseases occur which may lead to the 

 contamination of the milk of the affected cows by patho- 

 genic bacteria or toxins, it must be the duty of the owner 

 to prevent this milk being mixed with the other milk, 

 and, indeed, wholly to prevent its use as food for man. 



Such regulations as the following may be regarded 

 as necessary : 



The use of the milk from the whole herd is to be dis- 

 continued if foot-and-mouth disease, lung plague or 

 anthrax occur, also in the case of extended outbreaks of 

 transmissible infections of the udder, septic enteritis, 

 cowpox, or of any toxic disease of a large part of the 

 herd. 



The milk of individual cows should not be used, and 

 affected animals are immediately to be removed from 

 the stable, in cases of tuberculosis affecting the udder, 

 the uterus or the intestines and when the lungs are so 

 affected as to occasion physical symptoms; also, milk 



