146 Milk and Its Products 
would seem, therefore, that the best means of regulat- 
ing the traffic in milk would be, not to set up an 
artificial standard to which all must come, but to 
require each individual dealer to guarantee his own 
standard, and hold him responsible if his milk were 
found below. In this way it would be possible to 
sell milk of various qualities, from strictly skimmed 
to heavy cream, upon a graduated scale of prices, 
with exact justice to every one. 
Cream for consumption.—Since the introduction of 
the centrifugal separator, the use of cream as an 
article of diet and for household purposes has very 
rapidly increased, and the amount of cream so used 
now represents a very considerable proportion of the 
total production of milk. The sale of cream to con- 
sumers is usually carried on in connection with the 
sale of milk, and the conditions of care and cleanli- 
ness necessary in the one case apply equally well to 
the other. Cream, however, is much more generally 
delivered in bottles than is milk, and since the daily 
quantity used is smaller, there is a greater demand 
that it should. keep sweet for a longer time. For this 
reason it is still more important that cream should be 
kept, so far as possible, free from contamination with 
germs of fermentation, and at a comparatively low 
temperature from the time it leaves the separator 
till it goes into the consumer’s hands; and of course 
the fresher and freer from germs the milk is when 
separated, the better will be the keeping qualities of 
the resulting cream. Milk containing more than .2 per 
cent of lactic acid should not be used for the pro- 
