248 CLEAN MILK 



tedly nine-tenths of such watering is perfectly harmless. The ob- 

 ject of the numerical standard is not primarily to secure a low- 

 count, but fresh, sweet, pure milk, from healthy cows. No dealer 

 failing in any one of these features can secure a low count in milk, 

 and his failures, undetectable otherwise without tremendous cost 

 and labor in inspection, can be determined very simply and accu- 

 rately by the numerical standard. Such a standard will not secure 

 the exclusion of individual accidents — no method will do that — but 

 ir. will ensure and compel a very high average of freedom from un- 

 desirable conditions. 



4. That the bacterial count cannot be legally enforced is a 

 matter easily offset by the fact that it has been legally enforced 

 in Boston. It is true that in the chaotic condition lately exist- 

 ing as to technique and methods of calculation, it would have 

 been, and for some time yet will be, easy to secure contradictory 

 reports from " experts," or to produce evidence of the unstandard- 

 ized methods existing in too many laboratories. With a general 

 recognition amongst laboratory men and public health executives 

 that the numerical standard cannot properly be stated merely as 

 a fixed figure, but as a fixed figure obtained by standard methods 

 of technique and calculation, these difficulties will quickly disap- 

 pear. A great deal has already been accomplished through the 

 agency chiefly of the bacterial count, and more will be, as its 

 strength and weaknesses become better known. But the bacterial 

 count is simply a method of inspection, readily and easily applied 

 to great numbers of samples in a short time, with but few men. 

 It is not in itself an automatic reformer of the dairy, the milk 

 handler or the milk peddler. It is a test, like litmus, to determine 

 results : it is not except indirectly a producer of those results. 



A most useful application of the bacterial count is made by 

 those large milk concerns, who through their own private bacter- 

 iological laboratories, exercise supervision over the dairies supplying; 



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