154 



Illinois State Dairymen's Association. 



ant things in the supply of milk, chief among which were poison 

 ous adulterants used as preservatives and unsanitary conditions 

 on the part of those bringing milk into various cities throughou 

 the state. 



In 1906, out of a total of about 1,100 samples of mill 

 collected from the city milk supply in cities throughout the state 

 we found seventy-five containing poisonous adulterants. Hom 

 many were below a standard then in force in the state I will nO' 

 attempt to say because the standard fixed at that time was sc 

 peculiarly worded and drafted that it would not have amounted 

 to anything to have tried to enforce any kind of standard. The 

 law established a standard and provided no penalties for violation 

 of it, so we might as well not have had the law. 



The work this year was continued along very much the same 

 line and about an equal number of cities were visited in the 

 neighborhood of forty. I am very glad to say that while we did 

 not collect quite so many samples this year as we did last, yet 

 approximately eight hundred were collected from about the same 

 source as last year, and the total number of samples with poison- 

 ous adulterants were only thirty against seventy-five last year. 

 The percentage figures about 5J^ last year as against % of 1 

 per cent this year. Now I do not know just how much that 

 means to the dairymen, but to me it is certainly a very gratify- 

 ing thing and I believe it must be to the dairymen, because I do 

 not think you will find any stronger competition than the barn- 

 yard pump and the poisonous adulterents used for preservatives. 

 Every time you try to put a clean, good, wholesome product up 

 against these two factors the odds are very large indeed and it 

 is a situation that should not obtain in so enlightened a communi- 

 ty as Illinois and we propose to see to it that it does not obtain 

 again. So much for the poisonous preservative. 



We turned our attention this year to another phase of milk 

 adulteration in the city supply, and I have mentioned it before, — 

 it is the barnyard pump. If I had been a stranger in the state 

 and dropped in here and someone told me that about 3 per cent 

 or a little more of the milk samples collected from the city milk 

 supply had been watered or deliberately skimmed, I would not 

 have believed it. I had not thought it was a possible condition 

 but, after all, human nature is very much alike most everywhere, 

 or as David Harum would say, ''There are about as much human 



