Jasper County Democrat, Volume 11, Number 84, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 March 1909 — MILK DAIRIES AND INSPECTORS. [ARTICLE]

MILK DAIRIES AND INSPECTORS.

Dairymen of northern Indiana, who have had considerable trouble in complying with the rule* laid down by the Chicago boards of health, to which city they ship their milk, will appreciate the following from a country paper in New York state. What is true of conditions there may be in part true of Chicago. The article says: A farmer who was talking about the milk business and the officious inspectors from the city board of health, would like to know why tt is that country children never die from impure milk, while a continual howl goes up from the city for better sanitary conditions. There may be places in the country where the dairies are run under lax sanitary methods but they are the exception and not the rule. Milk shipped from the country is sanitary but is contaminated along the route and in New York city. Some of the skimming stations practice a trick which is onb of the worst known to the trade. They separate a portion of their milk and sell the cream in the city _ for which they receive sl2 to sl6 V can. They take the skim milk and put it with milk which tests from four to six per cent, butter fat and reduce it until it tests three per cent, which is just within the law. This cheap milk is sold to the poorest class of trade. It is dipped from the cans when street sweepers are in motion and is carried through dirty halls to squalid tenements. Is there wonder that the babies die? The children do not die from pure country milk but from the dirt and filth of the cities. In speaking of an inspector who visited Cobleskill recently a farmer said: “I don’t believe he had washed his hands in a year, or changed hiß shirt in six months.”