Page:Pure milk - a lecture delivered in the lecture room of the exhibition, July 30th, 1884 (IA b28525140).pdf/9

 milk which these cows produce to the public as genuine milk, is bound to take reasonable precautions to keep them in health, and such proper precautions as any man who values his stock would take, to see that they are sufficiently fed with proper food to prevent their deterioration in health and milk-giving power.

There are certain persons in the milk trade who distinctly challenge this view, and I shall not be putting the matter fairly before you if I do not state their arguments from their point of view, even though I state them merely to show their fallacy. The view which these representatives of a certain section of the milk trade take is, that any liquid which comes from the udder of a cow—no matter how much that cow may have been wrongly fed—is pure milk, and has a right to be classed as such, and to be exempt of the penalties of the adulteration Act. The leading argument which they put forward in favour of this view is, that the prize beasts of the agricultural shows have frequently given milk below the usually accepted standard of quality both as regards cream and solids not fat. I admit this fact without hesitation; it is well known, but the reason is not far to seek: animals at these shows are fed in such a way as to force the quantity of milk which they yield to the maximum, while at the same time the animals themselves are kept as far as possible in the highest external condition, and calculated to attract the eyes of those who judge of animals by external appearance.

When these very same cows are taken back to their homesteads, regularly and properly fed, kept from the impure air of the show-shed or show-yard, and milked in a proper way, no such abnormal results are obtained, but the milk assumes the ordinary typical character, even when the quantity yielded is somewhat less.

This argument is what I may fairly call the legitimate one, although I have shown its fallacy; but in addition to this, there is used what I call the illegitimate argument, namely, that certain cows, improperly and imperfectly fed, in fact half-starved, have at certain times given milk below