Pullman herald. [volume] (Pullman, W.T. [Wash.]) 1888-1989, 1913-09-26

S"N miSHl suppose Lnat where a
city adopts and enforces good
health protection system, the educa-
tive effect of this must necessarily
extend to the adjacent rural and sub
urban population. The truth is that
an effective city health protective
plan where the surrounding rural
districts have no adequate state or
local protection, makes food condi-
lions worse instead OF better in the
surrounding country districts. For
example, Pittsburg, Pa, and Cleve-
land, Ohio, have effective milk in
spection. The health officer of one
city notifies the health officer of the
other city when milk entry has been
refused to certain dairy. This pre-
vents that dairy from offering it's re-
fused milk to the other city. The re-
suits naturally would be that the
producers of bad milk refused sale in
these two larger cities could readily
dispose of their product in the small
eH places like McKees Rocks, Sc
wickley, Beaver Falls, and Coraopo-
lis, which might have no effective
milk inspection systems. The same
thing is happening in many New
Jersey towns. Milk refused entry
INTO New York City by the board of
health is sent to towns like Perth
Amboy, which may have health Of
ficers, but which do not provide
them with funds enough for efficient
milk inspection work and to carry
on expensive prosecutions.
The department of agriculture
feels that it should give more atten-
ton to the protection of these rural
communities. This means that the
work hitherto largely confined to de
lection of the presence of preserva-
! tives in labeled foods which do not
carry organic diseases, and the prose-
cutions for misbranding which might
work monetary fraud on the con-
sumner, should be widely and rapidly
extended to the control of Interstate
commerce in the dangerous unlab-
eled foods which can transmit and
which do transmit serious diseases.
Plans for extending this work to
interstate shipments of milk all over
the country have already been made.
II. is the plan of the department to
do more than exercise merely police
control over interstate shipments
Plans have been made at the same
time to show the milk producer how
to produce better milk; and also to
show him that it will pay him to pro-
duce his milk under the best condi-
tions. The educational and the regu-
latory work will go on together-a
ancient combination much used by
the old fashioned school teacher who
taught by precept when he could and
resorted to the switch when he
had to.
The only help that the depart
ment's work in the rural communi-
ties around the states edges can be
to the country districts in the heart
of the state is to educate, through ex-
ample and by means of publicity, the
rural population throughout all the
states to demand OF the state that it
extend to them the same protection
now enjoyed by the large cities
against preventable diseases dissem-
! mated through their food. 1t is
along these lines that the state Of
! fiCials can cooperate with the fed
eral government. They can help to
arouse the public to demand effect
! i've statewide measures in all the
states. and to insist on an efficient
and permanent staff of health off
Gals, and rigorous supervision of the
preparation of all foods liable to con-
tamination and pollution.
The department of agriculture will
do its duty, not merely in exercising
control over interstate commerce,
but also in helping food producers
bring their food up to proper quality,
and it will thus add materially to
the available supply of honest and
safe food in the country. The great
purpose of the department of agri-
culture is a constructive one, namely,
not merely to punish adulterators of
food but to help honest manufactur-
ers to discharge their duty to the
community by supplying wholesome
products. The actual detection and
closing of dirty or unsanitary factor
les and dairies, or the compelling OF
their owners to mend their methods,
must, however, rest with the states.
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