i68 Maine: agriculturaIv i:xpe;rime;nt station. 



CREAMERY INSPECTION. 



There are special laws regulating the sale of milk, cream, but- 

 ter and butter substitutes of which the Commissioner of Agri- 

 culture is the executive. These laws do not contemplate the 

 inspection of creameries. His representatives however endeav- 

 ored to correct matters by calling the attention of the manage- 

 ment to needed changes. For the most part these suggestions 

 were not followed. Therefore the present Commissioner desired 

 us to make sanitary inspection of these places. For this pur- 

 pose two members of his department were appointed as deputies 

 under the food law. The inspections here reported are the 

 joint work of the two departments. Part of the creameries 

 were visited by representatives of the Commissioner of Agricul- 

 ture and part of them by the deputies of the Director of this 

 Station. 



No prosecutions have thus far been made as a consequence 

 of any apparently unsanitary conditions of creameries noted. 

 The object of the food laws is to correct faults and insure the 

 future rather than to punish for any neglect or shortcoming of 

 the past. It is earnestly desired by the executive of the Maine 

 Food Law that the owners and managers of creameries co- 

 operate in afifecting the desired changes and make the creameries 

 of the State models of cleanliness. 



By far the greater number of criticisms made in regard to 

 the creameries has been upon the lack of screens or other pro- 

 tection from flies, but other serious faults have been observed, 

 among them dirty floors and walls ; dirty windows, in some 

 cases covered with cob-webs ; bad drainage with sour, dirty 

 water standing upon the floor ; sink or vat full of dirty, sour 

 water; unsanitary condition or location of toilet; lack of venti- 

 lation and condensing steam dropping into milk vats ; ill smell- 

 ing or improperly ventilated refrigerators; unnecessary exposure 

 of milk and cream bottle caps to dust and flies ; workmen spit- 

 ting about the creamery; pools of dirty water and sour milk 

 under the creamery with cracks through the floor so that flies, 

 odors, etc., would come directly through into the buildings. 

 Other faults also have been observed which any manager should 

 correct without having attention called to them by a pure food 

 official. 



