A BACTERIOLOGIST LOOKS AT THE DAIRY INDUSTRIES EXPOSITION, CHICAGO, 1960
Authors: WALTERS A. H. 
Published: August 2007

You will have gathered from this talk that there is much more I could tell you and discuss about this trip. There was our visit to some farms in Wisconsin where we met a farmer who said, We leave the Germans and the British to invent and discover things. We make em and sell ‘em’. There's something in that. Or my visit to Iowa State University where Professor John Ayres entertained me, and showed me a campus with 10,000 students and, as far as I could see, 10,000 cars, and here I also saw a murderous American football game. And of a visit to farms in Upper New York State where one farmer said, ‘I thought all Britishers were stuffed shirts–but you have a sense of humour!’ The fact that the British have no sense of humour seemed widely accepted.

On the relatively few farms I visited, I observed that water softeners were commonly installed. Each farmer we visited knew the hardness of his tap water and was very conscious of the importance of preventing milk stone. Where required, descaling solutions were routinely used. There were also, on some farms, washtroughs with built‐in electric or bottled gas heaters for circulation cleaning. I understood that the Chicago Health Board demanded hot detergent circulation at a minimum of 150oF. for at least 20 min. Before circulation cleaning was done, a few gallons of hot water were first run through to warm the pipelines to prevent heat loss of the circulating detergent solution. This was followed by a cold water rinse; then just before milking, the line was sanitized by flushing 1 gal. of water containing 140 p.p.m. available chlorine through for each 20 ft. of line.

But to sum up my impressions of the 22nd Dairy Industries Exposition, I would say first, it was big; secondly, it was very friendly; thirdly, in some respects it showed me the mechanised shape of things to come, particularly on the farm collection and milk packing side; fourthly, the standards of inspection and hygiene are higher than ours, particularly, with reference to can and bottle washing; fifthly, they are as much bedevilled with mastitis as we are; sixthly, they pay a great deal of attention to cleaning and consider that good cleaning, mechanical where possible, removed 99‐9 per cent of soil and contamination, and many favour cold terminal sterilization.

May 1 remind you that my look was as a bacteriologist, and therefore, there were many other things I must have failed to appreciate. Also, my total visit took seventeen days, five of which were spent at the Exposition. For such a vast subject in such a vast continent, I trust 1 might be forgiven if all my impressions are not as accurate in fact as they should be.

In closing, I would like to quote from a letter 1 received from Mr. T. L. Jones, of D1SA–‘When you speak to the Society of Dairy Technology, you may wish to remind your hearers that the next Dairy Industries Exposition will occur in late October, 1962, in Atlantic City, New Jersey. We had about two dozen visitors from England at the Exposition in Chicago in 1960; we would welcome seeing more of them in 1962 in Atlantic City.’