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Certified Milk
From a radio talk, published in The Bulletin of the Los Angeles County Medical Association, undated.
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Fifty-two years ago back in a small New Jersey town a little girl became seriously ill. Her father was a doctor.
This little girl was just one of many other children who became suddenly sick, and many of these children died in spite of the care that this child’s father, and other doctors of that district, gave them.
It was an epidemic of diphtheria, and diphtheria in 1888, when an epidemic was a thing to strike fear into the hearts of all parents, was so often a fatal illness.
This doctor did everything he could for his small daughter; at the same time he was giving of his energy to save other children, but in spite of all his care, in spite of everything that medical science had to offer at that time, the little daughter of Doctor Henry L. Coit died.
That epidemic of diphtheria was found to have had its source in the milk supply.
Doctor Coit’s loss has resulted in a tremendous benefit to the children of this country, because this physician with undaunted determination entered upon the work of preventing a recurrence of milk borne epidemics.
This Doctor of Medicine was able to grasp a dream and make it live. He was a man whose belief in his idea was strong enough to keep his courage from withering in the face of the most deadly of all opposition–ignorance.
At that time there were many of the good people not scientifically minded who scoffed at the idea that diphtheria could be transmitted by milk, just as today there are many good people who, in spite of a world of evidence, scoff at the idea that diphtheria is caused by a germ, and these good people are likely to continue to scoff at these germs until a group of these invisible death dealers attack them.
Doctor Coit may be considered the father of certified milk.
Let us repeat just what certified milk is:
It is not merely milk that is regularly tested for purity and comes from sanitary dairies. More than this, it is the product of a specially approved and trustworthy group of dairymen who have been found to be not wanting in honor and integrity, who are willing, because of the support of the Medical Association, to market their product in conformity with the very exacting standards of the Medical Milk Commission.
Certified milk is raw milk that is most carefully guarded from its source to the consumer.
In spite of tremendous opposition from many of the people, and especially from the dairymen of fifty-some years ago, Doctor Coit at last got his program for a supply of clean milk under way. First he laid down some seventy rules regarding the handling and management of dairies, the inspection of cattle, and the handling of the milk. Then he found a dairyman who was willing to follow these rules.
The result was that for the first time in history a Doctor of Medicine had a supply of milk to prescribe for babies, for children, for expectant mothers, and for convalescents–a supply of milk that he was confident was as pure a milk as could be produced.
The value of this sort of milk supply was recognized by other Doctors of Medicine in neighboring states, and county medical associations sent committees of physicians to visit the certified milk farm that was in operation as a result of Doctor Coit’s efforts. These medical committees returned to their own states and set up organizations of doctors in their own communities to supervise the production of certified milk.
The science of medicine and those who practice the science of medicine are responsible for bringing the production of milk under controlled conditions. Today there are more than eighty medical milk commissions throughout the United States insuring in these eighty different districts a supply of pure raw milk.
Here in Los Angeles certified milk has had a very interesting history. Even before the conception of the New Jersey Doctors had become nation-wide Doctors of Medicine in Los Angeles County were working on methods of inspection for dairies. A minor epidemic in one of the smaller cities of this county was traced to an infection of milk. A milk committee was appointed by the medical society instructed to undertake a system of dairy control. This committee was made up of physicians who were devoted to the cause of public health.
In 1907 the Milk Commission of the Los Angeles County Medical Association was organized. Later the California dairy laws were passed for the control of certified milk in the hands of milk commissions appointed by the county medical societies. The first certified milk was produced in Los Angeles in January, 1908.
The seventy rules to control the production of pure milk which were laid down by Doctor Coit in New Jersey are still in existence. They have been augmented and modernized until now they constitute the famous methods and standards for the production of certified milk as adopted by the American Medical Association. They form a most rigid code which is followed by certified dairies throughout the country. They have to do with such topics as the hygiene of dairy buildings, the construction of milk stables, the immaculate equipment of milk receiving rooms, the scrupulous care of utensils and machines, the management and scientific feeding and inspection of the herds of cattle, the special veterinarian supervision and the testing of all cows in the herd, the control of tuberculosis and other infections, the carefully maintained record of each cow in the herd, the exact technique to be followed by the employees in milking and handling and transporting milk, the frequent and thorough medical examination of all employees connected with the certified dairy, and then a long list of strict standards for the milk itself.
In the control of certified milk politics can play no part. There is no patronage; there is no favoritism, and there is no condoning of errors or omissions. There can be no laxity of enforcement.
In these radio talks we have told of that horde of unseen enemies to life that exists behind the scientific frontier. The responsibility of a Medical Milk Commission is the responsibility of a military outpost guarding the people against death. Such a responsibility is a tremendous one.
Certified milk is not put through a process to make it pure. It is produced pure. The rigid regulations under which certified milk is produced are designed to avoid contamination rather than to nullify the effects of contamination.
A medical inspector and examiner, working through and with the clinical and bacteriological laboratory operated by the Milk Commission, stands guard over the health of every employee in the certified dairies and stands ready to reject any employee who is ill, or who is shown to be a carrier of any infection. Health records of each man are kept on file and kept up to the minute, and a vigilant watch is maintained for possible carriers of epidemics.
Every bottle of Certified Milk is identified with a single farm–a unit of production. This makes it possible for the laboratory to check conditions in each unit, even to the careful inspection of each employee and each individual cow. But milk, other than certified, is not produced this way. It is largely a mixed milk which may come from hundreds of small farms run by hundreds of widely distributed employees caring for heterogeneous herds of cows, so making it virtually impossible for any laboratory to check conditions accurately. Such milk is protected by pasteurization.
All of this may seem to be a great to do about a very commonplace subject–milk. But milk is the first food with which we start life as individuals. The economic aspects of milk are important, and aside from the medical profession taking an active interest in insuring a supply of pure milk, medical science is vitally interested in assuring the people of milk of a high nutritional value, and in the education of the people as to the value of pure milk.
Milk and the dairy industry are inseparably linked with a nation’s health, and the normal growth and development of its people. To quote the National Dairy Council:
“It was once generally thought that the size of people of the various races was due to the climate in which they lived. It is now believed that it is diet that is largely responsible for the fact that people grow at different rates and eventually attain different weight and statures.
“That the food which a people eat, especially in early childhood at a time when most rapid growth is expected, has a lasting effect upon the size of an entire race of people is evidenced by studies made upon the oriental races, particularly the Japanese. A Japanese investigator has found that Japanese children born and reared in the United States are both taller and heavier than those born in Japan.”
Today most of us realize the importance of food in relation to our health, and the future health and physical stamina of our children.
Milk is an important factor for every parent to consider. It is so important, in fact, that the government itself takes a deep interest in it. We quote the following statement given a few years ago by a high governmental official before the delegates of the World’s Dairy Congress:
“The functions of the organization you represent are not alone those of the promotion of the welfare of agriculture, nor alone those of the production of a better food supply, but you have a triple function and that is the function of human welfare, because upon the milk industry, more than any other of the food industries, depends not alone the problem of public health, but there depends upon it the very growth and strength of the white race….
“It is not alone the well-being of our people, but the very growth of our race to which the milk producers contribute.”