The daily morning journal and courier., 1896-12-05
The Milk Business.

To the Editor of the JOURNAL AND COURIER:
 Every business has it's times and sea- sons of Encouragement and loss. Our business some of us think, has more than it's share. We have to fight against the skinned milk which the creameries send in great quantities into
 the city, and We have to oppose that grade of milk which has been too near the pump. These are bad enough. both for the dealer and the consumer. but not half as bad as when typhoid fever comes in milk. Then all the dealers
 must suffer. Suspicious of skinned
 milk and water as a mixture are not
 to be compared with the fear that ty-
 phoid germs are in all the milk which family uses. No one can blame those
 who use every precaution against dis ease, but some precautions are not very wise. A wise precaution would seem to
 be to have the Board of Health look
 out for the whole business Then if
 there is such a thing as killing the dis
 ease germ in milk let 1t be done surely
 and decently, or if there is not have all
 dairy farms which send milk into the
 city inspected as often as necessary.
 We hear great deal nowadays
 about destroying the disease germs and
 the prevailing idea seems to be that if the milk is subjected to heat of 120 de-
 grees all such things will be killed, and
 some of us nlilkmen don't believe it. We know that when eggs in an incuba- tor happen accidentally to get heated
 up to no or 115 degrees the life in them
 Is not killed and the eggs hatch We
 know too, that if such a degree of heat will kill any germ that may be in the
 milk it will be much better, easier and cheaper for the buyer of the milk to
 heat it up to that point, at the regular
 price, than to pay ten cents a quart be- cause some one else says he has done it for them; and then, too, the family
 well knows just how it is done and how clean the things are that it is done in. I have heard of cases when this Pas- | teurized milk, as they call it, has been said to keep better than other milk. I should say the reason for this, and the | only reason is that the milk has been scalded That always makes milk keep l better, but it is not fit to use except in cases of diarrhoea, where it is a sure remedy. Such things should only be done by responsible and competent
 persons-under the Beard of Health, if | possible. An incompetent person may
 easily get a wrong thermometer a | Centigrade for a Fahrenheit, for in- l stance. Scientific men all over the
 world use the former, and it would be natural for such a man to recommend one for scientific use. In this case 100 | degrees is boiling point. And so I say | if the typhoid germ must be killed by heat, why not use your own common
 sense about it?
 l Probably in all kinds of business there has got to be a lot of humbug- ging, because it is said that the people | like to be humbugged; but let us keep | it out of the things we eat and drink, if possible. It seems to me that 1t would | pay any family to hire team. or bi- | cycle, to run out into the country on a visit to the places where the family I milk is produced-just to see the sani- | tary condition of the stables and sur
 roundings. I am glad to have any one 1 try it on me at any time or all the time
 Why not know what we are at and
 where we are at, and no guesswork l about it? MILKMAN.