Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 73.djvu/176

For instance, good Holstein milk is at times not salable on account of its total solids not coming within the limits of the law (Massachusetts State Standard). The law demands during winter 3.70 per cent, fat and 13 per cent, solids, while in the summer 3 per cent, fat and 12 per cent, solids. As we all know, the Holstein milk, unless the cows are especially fed, falls below this standard. Now, from a medical point of view the Holstein milk is exactly what we find best for infant feeding and it is an extremely good milk for any one to drink. The immense number of infants, however, who live entirely upon milk should be taken into consideration in this question, and I believe that the people should be allowed to buy this milk just as they should be allowed to buy a milk modified to suit a special infant who is being taken care of.

Too much can not be said or done to encourage the production and consumption of a food product which possesses nutritive elements of the right kind in the proper proportion, and nourishing qualities of such high value—a product which is essential to the proper development of the child, upon the future health of.which the state becomes dependent for its prosperity a product which has made healthy, contented and prosperous the nation, which for two thousand years has enjoyed its benefits.

As we have seen, no cow can obey the mandate of a legislature, no matter what liberty she may be allowed to exercise in the choice of her food. Some protection against adulteration and other forms of fraud in these selfish and greedy commercial days is necessary, but a standard based upon the total fat and total solids not fat, in milk, particularly when that fat percentage is placed so high that none of our most useful and healthful breeds can produce her,d milk in compliance with it, simply defeats the object for which it was designed.

For example, the milk test at the St. Louis Exposition was probably the most scientifically conducted and most illuminating in results ever made in this or any other country.

Among others the following groups competed in the tests: twenty-five Jerseys, five Brown Swiss, fifteen Holsteins and twenty-five Short Horns, not one of which produced milk up to the legal standard established by some states, and yet these cattle had been selected and fitted for an international exhibition, and were fed, groomed and tutored by experts in the art of milk production. Some of the very animals, valued perhaps at several thousand dollars, are producing milk in several different commonwealths to-day, which if sampled by the state inspector could put its owner in jail for violation of the law. Moreover, when we understand that the relative percentage of fat and solids not fat, in milk, varies in each cow with the period of lactation, time of day when the sample is taken, with the weather and seasons, the physical condition, and many other contingencies, and when we realize that two quarts from the same cow can differ; also two quarts from