^^ Illinois State Dairymen's Association. 



appreciate the fact that the price of feed has been increasing 

 during the past ten years and is now nearly double what it was 

 ten years ago; the price of labor has increased and the cost of 

 producing milk has increased all along the line. The consumers 

 will begin to appreciate that and the time will soon some when 

 there will be a call for better milk and the producer should be 

 ready to supply that demand. 



I say the consumer does not appreciate good milk and I 

 might give an instance to support that. A producer near Phila- 

 delphia, who was selling certified milk, called some of his best 

 customers out to his dairy one day to look the place over and he 

 thought he would give them a test to see if they knew what clean 

 milk was, so he had three kinds of milk prepared for them to 

 taste; No. -1 was his clean certified milk, No. 2 he had injected 

 in a little cow flavor and No. 3 a little more of that flavor. He 

 passed the milk along to those ten or twelve consumers, many of 

 whom held high positions; they tasted sample No. 1 and said 

 it was a little flat, there was something lacking, it did not seem 

 to be quite right; they tasted sample No. 2 and said that was 

 a little better than the other but it was not quite what they had 

 been accustomed to; then they tasted No. 3 and pronounced 

 that the best of the lot, so I say consumers today do not appre- 

 ciate the value of clean milk and there is just as much need for 

 education, and I believe more, of the consumer than there is of 

 the producer and it is the consumer who is going to have great 

 influence in this campaign for cleaner and better milk. 



Now these contests are of value to the dealer because the^ 

 are taking advantage of it in assisting them to determine where 

 the good dairies are, hence making it easier for the dealers to 

 find a supply of milk to meet the demands made upon them for 

 a good product. With a supply of good milk to handle there 

 is less trouble with sour milk and less complaint from consumers. 

 These contests are of great value to them, not only milk contests 

 but dairy farm contests, such as the one held in Cleveland. I 

 know in my own case when we began to score dairies around 

 Washington, our milk supply at home was very unsatisfactory. 

 I looked at the score of the dairy we were taking milk from, 

 and found it scored 37; then I looked down the line, found the 

 dair)^ that scored 70 or 75 and changed to that dairy and bought 

 milk at the same price. 



