Evening Star Newspaper, September 29, 1929, Page 109

| THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON. D. C. _s_li'j‘){ty"li:l-:‘:r\* 20, '] Better Milk for the Nation Through New Handling Methods. New Gradeé Developed by Department of Agriculture Scientists Has Kept Sweet and Pure for Five Weeks Under a Revolutionary Vacuum System of Milking and Processing. BY HOW ARD P. BAILEY. ¢ € ROM cow to you untouched by air.” This soon may be the proud slogan of the dairyman as he brings you milk better than the present highest standard certified milk at a cost no higher, if as high, as now paid for grade A. An entirely new field in milk handling, the ramifications of which almost strain the imagi- nation, has been opened up through the de- velopment of a vacuum system of production which has yielded milk with a bacterial count startlingly low and in scme cases even sterile, milk which when held at a temperature of 45 degrees in the raw cor unpasteurized state, has kept perfectly sweet and pure for five weeks or more. What this means in opening up sources of milk supply hundreds and even thousance of miles wway from large centers of population is easily discernible, The new system offers the dairy farmer an opportunity to cairy on his work with all the efficiency of a great industrial organization. It greatly speeds the long, tedious operation of milking, it eliminates the slow drive to the milk plant. It permits the substitution of a woman or a boy of h'gh school age for the more expensive hired man for the milking operation. It makes possible the milking of as many as a hundred cows a day by one woman with far less physical effort than she would expend in ordinary household duties during the course of a day, It turns the slow, painstaking process of cleaning and ster- ilizing milking utensils into a mere turning on of two or three. valves. ALL the insanitary practices of old-fash- ioned milking, all the constant battles milk inspectors go through in their efforts to impress on farmers the vital necessity of keep- ing their stables spick and span, of protecting their milk against dust and other sources of outside contamination, .all the expensive and tedious process of pasteurizing can be elimi- nated as the milk passes through an unbroken Dr. B. B. Graves of the Departmoent Of 2. the new vacuum milking syste vacuum from the cow’s udder to the botNe de- livered at your doer. The milking machine which draws the milk from the cow by vacuum replacing hand milk- ing has long been known. Glass-lined tank trucks which gather milk are familiar on the streets of most large cities. Even glass-lined tank railway cars have been developed to bring milk from rural milk stations to the cities, replacing the old, familiar and usually battered and partially rusted 10-gallon can. Bottling of milk in vacuum also has been developed in the past but the one great connecting link from the milking machine to the milk plant has remained as of old, open to contam:nation even under the most conscientious and pains- taking efforts. Even certified milk with all the care exercised in its production has still been faced with the possibility that outside sources might bring about an increase in the bacterial content. It has remained for Federal experts of the Dcnartment of Agriculture workinz under the dicection of Dr. B. B. Graves at the Experi- mental Farm at Beltsville, Md., to perfect the process which now makes possible the complete vacuum system. Not only has the process been perfected but the operation has been made so practicable that the saving in expense and the lowering of overhead offered is sufficiently great to appeal to the farmer at once. Immediate adoption of the system, of course, cannot be expected for the process is such a radical departure from present methods and it involves so much scrapping of present equip- ment that the transition is likely to be slow at first. The elimination of expensive city bot- tling plants and the transferring of this ac- tivity to country stations from which the dealers can ship their bottle product to the city cheaper than by old methods, can hardly be brought about overnight but the future certainly holds great possibilities along this line, Dr. Graves believes. He foresees the day when the city dealers will have only a ware- house and offices in town with provision, of course, for delivery equipment. He believes that it is highly possible that milk may be brought into the city only twice a week and sold di- wtied i e The double-shelled vacuum tank in the milk house, to which the milk is drawn from the milking barn and in which it may be pasteurized. rectly to grocers who will be able to stock up a three or four day suppiy at a time and then deliver it to the customer as the customer de- sires, purer after the three or four day wait than grade A mik is now. 'l‘o begin with, the new process calls for the construction of two buildings, a dairy house in which the mi'k is gathered and a milking barn where it is drawn, The milking barn need be only large enough to accommo- date four or, preferably, six cows. Naturally the cost of such a structure is small. Within the milking barn are a series of six stalls equipped with an arrangement of iron pipes serving as a guide to keep each cow in pl At the front ends of each is a gate from wi a rope leads by a series of pulleys to end of the stall where the milker ca his activities. The cows enter the barn by a runway from the gathering pen, six at a time. Before they enter the milking house they are thoroughly cleaned and the udders are washed with disinfectant. Reaching the barn the cows enter the un- occupied stalls to await adjusting of the milk- ing machine. A certain amount of bacteria are always present in the first milk which is drawn and these may be eliminated by a slight g ke b i Surcan of dninei tnwiary standing in the milking house, where m has been deveolped, at Beltsville, Md. amount of fore-milking,. that is, drawing off the first small amount and discarding it be- fore the cups are attached. This, however, is not necessary, experiments at the Beltsville Farm indicate for the contamination is slight and is of a nature which requires air and higher temperatures than those at which milk is kept for their development. No spore-form- ers, the type of bacteria which rec:st pasteur- ization and bring about serious contamination, are found in the milk when drawn from a healthy cow. These spore-formers which have an ability to maintain their spark of life within a sheli-like exterior, resist even the boiling temperature for many minutes in some in- stances. They find access to the milk. from dust, stable litter, and unclean utensils which have been exposed to insanitary conditions. The vacuum system eliminates them from the dairyman’s worries. After the teat cups have been adjusted, the mflkertunuonthevncuumvhkhhsumbd from a pump outside the milking room, and passes on to the second and third pair of cows in succession. The milk when drawn insteac of being gathered in the usual milking machine receptacle is carried into a glass tank suspended .from,a scale above and between each. .pair of cows. The rate of milking is thus alway$ shown to the operator, . When the flow is stopped, instead of the difficult “stripping” the drawing of the final amounts of milk and the milk which is by far the richest in butter fats, the operator simply massages the udder and the machine does the rest. VVHEN the milking of a cow is completed, the operator notes down the cow's number ) and the weight of the milk she yielded in K & der that her efficiency as a milk producer may be kept on record, and then turns .a valve which draws the milk from the glass_ tank through a sanitary pipeline over into the milk house, wirere a much larger vacuum tank is lo- cated: It requires about 20 to 25 seconds for this process and the operator is then ready fo remove the cups from the first of each pair of cows and adjust them on the second, repeating the operation as before. i The cups are dipped in disinfectant after each cow has been milked and any possible camtamination during the shift is thereby elim- irsted. After the six cows have been milked, the ropes extending to the gates are drawn and the gates rise, allowing the cows to pass out of the fronts of the stalls. From there they walk along a passage way and out to the feeding barn. The feeding barn may be little more than a shed ar- rangement on the floor of which straw litter has been strewn. As the need arises the bedding is added to and the necessity of cleaning this stable at frequent intervals eliminated. The expgrimental farm workers have found that several months may elapse before it is necessary to clean out, which is far less an expense than t.hel present system of cleaning the stables twice daily. ¥ The pipe line which carries the milk from the milking house to the milk room is not only much cleaner than present methods, but is a great time saver. The milk from one tank runs out while the operator passes down the line opening the valves on the other. Present meth- ods call for the milker to carry -each pail as filled to the milk room, where it must be dumped into the 10-gallon cans sitting in the cooling vats. The lids of these cans are kept partially tilted to aid in the escape of the animal heat and also to permit any odors in the milk to rise off. : Great care must be taken at this point, to pro- Continued on Fourteenih Page