184 Maine; agricuIvTural e;xpe:rime;nt station. 1912. 



Sanitation. 



Probably the worst feature in connection with the carbonated 

 beverages manufactured and sold in the State at the present 

 time is in connection with sanitation. One case observed dur- 

 ing the past summer, and not yet settled, was that noted in the 

 table which follows in which a dead fly was found in one of the 

 bottles. Too large a proportion of the bottlers of the State are 

 lax in their precautions against flies and dirt. In too many of 

 the establishments screening precautions are not adequate and 

 the cleansing and sterilization of the bottles before they are 

 filled is not thoroughly done. 



In all of the establishments visited during the past summer 

 particular attention was given to the way in which bottles were 

 washed and sterilized before being filled. Some of the bottlers 

 were found to be thoroughly washing and sterilizing. In other 

 cases it was claimed that it was impracticable to do the work 

 in exactly the same manner as it was being done in other estab- 

 lishments. In this connection it is interesting to note what a 

 practical bottler has to say upon this subject, and a quotation 

 is given below from an address by Mr. A. J. Crowe, Hatties- 

 burg, Miss., given in October, 1912, at New Orleans before the 

 Twenty-fourth Annual Convention of the American Bottlers 

 Protective Association. The extract is taken from The Ameri- 

 can Bottler: 



"Every bottle should be inspected over an electric light after it is 

 washed and filled. But to start at the first operation in the process of 

 clean-ing bottles a plant should be equipped with a soaking machine 

 which carries the bottles through a ten-minute soaking in a hot solu- 

 tion of caustic soda, or some similar preparation that will thoroughly 

 and practically destroy all germs and filth. No soaker is complete with- 

 out a heating process, by which the caustic soda solution is always hot 

 when the soaker is being operated. For a small plant, where a larger 

 apparatus would be too expensive, or not practical for any reason, a 

 small, inexpensive double-jacket stove, connected by two iron pipes, will 

 do the work in a most satisfactory way, using coal as fuel, at a very 

 small cost. This soaking should remove the rust from the neck of the 

 bottle, and if it fails in this I would consider it a complete failure. I 

 object to any revolving wheel or drum soaker, from which the bottles 

 have to be removed by hand, because if a man's hand can stand the 

 hot solution, the dirt and rust on the bottle necks and in the bottles 

 can pass through without being removed." 



