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On the heat value of milk

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Date
1905
Author
Hall, Andrew Alexander
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Abstract
 
 
Milk may be defined as the fluid secreted in the lacteal gland of female mammals for the nourishment of their young. This definition is satisfactory enough from the scientific point of view if we add that the animals should be healthy. In other words, we are not to understand by milk any fluid which can be squeezed from the teat of the female. Pus might be so obtained in certain states, and while it would fulfil the first condition of the definition, it would be worse than useless for the nourishment of the young, and it would not occur in a healthy animal.
 
Cow's milk occupies a position of paramount importance as an article of diet. It contains all the elements requisite to maintain proper nutrition, and although it can hardly be called a perfect food, it approaches that ideal more than any other article of diet. Thus dietetic and commercial considerations come in, and the simple definition given above is not sufficient. It is necessary to have some stand- and by which to judge of the quality of the milk offered for sale. Cases of wilful adulteration are not uncommon, and this, in conjunction with the fact that cow's milk has so often to take the place of mother's milk in the nursing of the infant, emphasises the desirability of, and indeed the necessity for some legal standard.
 
The necessity is admitted on all sides. The difficulty is to determine what the standard is to be. The difficulty is a very real one. Nature, it is said, delights in variations. The truth of the -aphorism is amply borne out in the case of milk, for analysis of milks of different cows, or even of milks of the same cows at different times,afford striking differences. The variations are so great that in the Farmer's Bulletin on "Milk as a food", published by the United States Department of Agriculture, it is said "it is entirely possible that one man may pay nearly twice as much as his neighbour for the same amount of nutriment when both buy milk at the same price per quart ". The quality ofl the milk depends on many things and to a great extent the variations are unavoidable. Thus it is known that some breeds of cows yield quantity, others quality; the morning milk is usually larger in quantity, but poorer in quality; and the poorest milk is yielded in the spring. The age, the feeding and the housing of the animal are also important factors in determining the quantity and the quality of the yield of milk.
 
We, therefore, require to have something more definite than "the fluid secreted in the lacteal gland of the cow". The natural definition must give way to a more or less artificial one. A purchaser is entitled to receive the article for which he asks and pays, and in the case of milk, he ought to receive a fluid approximating in composition to the normal article. If this be admitted, then the only possible definition would seem to be one stating what the normal article really is. Such a definition can only be obtained after an analysis of many samples of milk taken from healthy animals under varying conditions. In this way one arrives at a correct idea as to the average composition of milk and after making due allowances, a limit is fixed,below which no milk offered for sale should fall. Such is the basis of the present legal standard of milk.
 
The only objection that can be urged is that on occasion an apparently healthy cow will give milk which is below the legal standard, and it is held to be a hardship that the vendor should be punished for selling milk which satisfies the natural definition. These abnormal milks are rare, and in any case,commercially,milk is almost invariably the mixed milk of a herd and therefore the low milk of one cow will be counterbalanced by the mixture of extremes.
 
The position adopted by the state is perfectly logical. Milk is defined as a fluid of a certain composition and the vendor is held responsible for what he sells. If he sells milk which falls below the standard fixed on an analysis of many thousand samples, he must suffer the consequences.
 
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/1842/28183
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