72 ILLINOIS STATE DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION 



What is good milk anyway? We have talked about good 

 milk just as though it was a thing with which we are all thor- 

 oughly familiar. Have we stopped to think what really makes 

 up the quality of milk? There are three or four elements in the 

 situation, all of which are important. 



1. Food value. The one brought out by the first speaker 

 is food value. It is a fact which we all agree on I think, H;hat 

 milk high in solids not fat, and fat has more food value than a 

 milk made up more largely of water — and so one of the first 

 elements in the question of food value is the amount of actual 

 food that is in the unit of milk which we buy. Other things 

 being equal a milk which carried 5 per cent fat and solids that 

 go with it, is a more valuable food than milk that carried 3 per 

 cent. The food value of different samples of natural milk is 

 proportional to the fat content. 



2. Healthfulness. The health fulness of milk is a real 

 element of its value. I believe it is the suspicion regarding this 

 element of its value which tends most to reduce the consumption 

 of milk. We too often have a feeling that it is absolutely dan- 

 gerous to partake of milk. There is in fact an element of danger 

 — there is in fact an element of danger in everything we do. 

 Still there is a real danger with the thousands of people drink- 

 ing milk for we have epidemics of typhoid fever, diphtheria, and 

 scarlet fever. This danger can be eliminated by proper pasteur- 

 ization. 



3. Cleanliness. Ordinarily we do not see much dirt in 

 our milk supply. The milk supply suffers because it has to be 

 produced under circumstances where that degree of cleanliness 

 which we would like to have our food products produced, is 

 sometimes lacking. A barn is a barn, it is not quite like a good 

 kitchen, and as a matter of fact there is a little dirt in all milk. 

 We produce and sell at the University about 500 quarts of milk 

 a day and we have gone the absolute limit in attempting to make 

 that a thoroughly clean milk supply, — ^beyond reproach. We 

 use that milk route as a teaching proposition to illustrate a milk 

 route can be handled to make a thoroughly safe milk supply, 

 which is at the same time satisfactorily clean. And after all is 

 said and done I wish I could go to the storeroom and take a 

 bottle of milk and show it to the students and not find little par^ 



