Ear on Chicago; Milk

This is the sound of a modern milking machine. We're talking to you from Burton Lane Farm and Lake Forest Illinois, the time 5 a .m. in the morning, and we propose to tell you in sound the story of milk, the story of milk from the farm to the dairy to the ultimate consumer to you. Burton Lane Farm is managed by Mr. AE Cox, Kenneth Chestnut as the Herdsman, and the dairy extension representative is Frank Kapuch, who's here with us this morning, bright and early, to tell us about what happens in the process of getting milk from the cow and to us eventually. How long have you been in this work, Mr. Kapuch? I'm in my 36th year. Well, you've seen lots of cows, lots of milk. Now, is this a typical operation from when a major dairy, such as Bowman, would get its milk? Yes, here it is. And you are normally out inspecting the process yourself to see that the milk is up to standard, the farm, and so on. That's right. Bowman dairy company has 14 of us men working on farms. I want to get Mr. Cox over close to the microphone. He's bright and chipper this morning to tell me something about the size of this farm. Well, we're farming just to 1 ,000 acres. Just 2 ,000? That's right. We have

220 gurns this, 400 hogs, 2 ,000 chickens, and 10 men. Well, you have some wonderful animals here, and some of them are quite valuable. That's right. Some of them we pay as high as $20 ,000 a piece for. I was looking at the records that you have above some of their stalls. What's the most valuable animal you have? Well, I think Solitaire, cow we bought from Pennsylvania. What would you value as Solitaire at? At 15 ,000. 15 ,000 dollars as of right now. Yeah. Well, now, what would a cow such as Solitaire produce in a day, a month, a week, or a year, however you think it is? Well, she'll produce about 10 tons of milk at a year. 10 tons of milk. A year, yeah. Well, then you can understand why Solitaire would be worth considerable money. That's right. What about the feeding of these animals? I notice these bins out in front. They have actually a tasty -looking mixture. Well, they have a feed that we mix up that's got dried beet pulp in it, an oats and corn, and they get about two and a half pounds to every one pound

of feed to every two and a half pounds of milk. I see. Now, do the cows stay in these stalls very long? They stay in here while they're being milked, and then they go out into the pastures, different pastures, about every two weeks. And in the winter time, they stay inside. That's right. Well, they go out. We try and get them out for exercise every day. Now, you are running Gernsey's here. Are you particularly fond of the Gernsey cows? Yes, we are very fond of the Gernsey cow. Of course, there's lots of people like Holstein's too. But we, in particular, you're Mr. Burton always wanted to buy the Gernsey cows. Mr. Cox, you're a veteran farm manager of how many years standing? Well, I was 22 years at St. James Farm. I've been year eight years. I came to this country from England in 1913, trained in polyphonies, and then I switched over to cows in 1925. Well, you've seen much of the development in agriculture over the years, and in the improvement of milk breeds and so on. What would you say is the biggest improvement that we've made in so far as the milk cow is concerned in this country? Well, I think we've approved the cow here and made her,

that she milks much more than she does in any other country, I believe. Now, the herdsman is the man who has direct control of these animals. Lumpy talk with you, Mr. Chestnut. Is it quite a job to take care of a cow that's worth 16 or $20 ,000? Do you worry about it more than some of your other animals? We consider it a pleasure to take care of these kind of cattle. However, we do feel that there's more responsibility in taking care of that kind of a cow than your ordinary cow. You become pretty well acquainted with these animals over the years, don't you? Yes, we come well acquainted with these cattle, and we find that each animal is a different makeup, and each animal has to be handled that way in order to get and reach her greatest peak in production. Is that right? Now, can you point out one of these animals that we have here in the stalls now and tell me what would be different about this one over here? What is this crown bunny? We have Bonnie here. Bonnie, we find that she came here from the state of California. At that time, she was the highest classified

cow in the state of California. She's now on official tests supervised by the University of Illinois, and she should make around 750 pounds of fat for us. She's a very gentle -looking animal. You find that all of the gurnsies are very much that way. That's one of the qualities of the currency cow. Bonnie, having come from California doesn't have any particular love for orange juice or sunshine, does she? I'm afraid not. Well, these are beautiful animals, and your barn is immaculately clean, and it's a real pleasure to see an operation such as this sort, even though it's at this early hour of the morning. How many times a day of these cows milked three times? These cows are milked three times a day. They're milked at five of them morning, one at noon, and nine of a nine. We're now in the bulk cooling room of Burton Lane farm, where we're going to introduce the assistant director of public relations for the Bowman Dairy Company, Thomas E. Adamson Jr. Tom, tell me the milk is now almost the property of Bowman Dairy, is it not?

Yes, soon it will leave here by tank, so I can be taken directly to the pasteurizing and bottling plant in the city, one of four that we have. Now, what's the temperature of the milk in this tank, right? Now, what's it kept at? Well, I see that on the gauge here, it shows it's exactly 38 degrees, just six degrees above freezing, a wonderful temperature for milk going into the city. And it will be kept at that temperature during its transit in the truck, too. That's right, and it'll be bottled at approximately that temperature after pasteurization. All right, so the next stop will be the Bowman Dairy Plant. We're now at the Bowman Dairy Company Plant on Central Avenue in River Forest, Illinois, where a truckload of milk from various farms around the Chicago land area has just arrived, and it's about to be unloaded to enter the process, all milk undergoes in this dairy plant. Tom, what's the first thing that's happening here? This milk is being unloaded onto the conveyor lines going into the receiving room, where it will be inspected. It'll be

poured into a weighing tank, the cans, and lids will be thoroughly washed and sterilized. They'll come back out onto this same truck, Mr. Flynn. You'll see them in just a few minutes, and then the milk is released and goes into the, what we call, holding tanks. It comes in from the country as I told you, faster than we can pasteurize it. It's held clean and cold and agitated in those tanks until we pasteurize and bottle it. Now, getting back to this truck, you say the cans will go back on the truck and will go back out to the farmer. Otherwise, this driver has to make what, two trips a day. That's right, sir. He takes these farms, these cans back out to the farms, thoroughly sterilized, clean and sterilized for tomorrow morning's milk. And I noticed that he used tremendous quantities of ice and carrying this milk. These trucks are all refrigerated. Here goes the truck out now. I suppose he's unloaded his milk and it's about to re -deliver the milk cans. Yes, he's going back to the farms right now. You speak of the tremendous amount of ice right here at this plant. We make a great

deal of ice. It's crushed up and goes on to the bottles of milk as they come into the refrigerating room. This ice, of course, has come in off this farmer's truck. And all of that milk has to be kept constantly cold because it's a perishable product. It's very, very important that it's kept properly refrigerated all times, even when it's in your ice box, Mr. Flynn. That's right. And the one thing I've always wanted to ask someone in the dairy business, on the side of each milk truck is this Chicago Board of Health Cremet with a number after it. What does that mean? That means that the farmer or the man who has brought this milk to us has a clearance from the Board of Health to bring the milk to a Chicago -operated dairy here in the Chicago area. In other words, it meets the standards that Chicago has set up for handling this. That's right. Yes, Mr. Flynn. And I might add that Chicago can be very proud of its milk. We have the most wonderful milk supply in the entire world. And it's due to the rigid rules and regulations of the Board of Health and the State Board of Health that we can be very

proud of this supply. These milk cans have now been removed, most of them have, from this truck which arrived just a few moments ago, and they're moving along an assembly line, a moving belt. And each milk can has particular numbers on it. What are those numbers, Tom? Each farmer has a number, Mr. Flynn. The cans that we see now are a farmer number 20. He may be 50 miles from this plant or he may be 15. But anyway, as number 20 cans go into the receiving room, they are all poured into the holding, into the weighing tank together and weighed together. So let us say that he sends in 10 cans of milk that weighs 800 pounds total. The sample is taken into the laboratory where it's tested for butter fat content. And the milk is released. We know that farmer number 20 sent us in 800 pounds of milk today. Now that's a guess, it may not, may be a thousand pounds of milk. Now even as we're outside on this loading and

unloading dock, you begin to see the great steps that your industry takes to maintain perfect cunningness. The interior bodies of the milk trucks are being swapped down now. The milk cans are all sparkling. And I'm anxious to follow the course of this milk as it arrives from the farmer and is about to enter this most modern dairy plant. So suppose we begin our tour of your plant. Yes, very happy, happy to come out, Mr. Flynn. As we tell the story in words of the pasteurizing, the bottling, the selling, the delivery of milk to the American consumer in the Metropolitan Center, our position now is on a balcony overlooking a busy floor where milk comes in in its raw state and where it leaves in bottles in cases. We'll talk about each of these processes in just a moment, but from this overall vantage point, this is what we see. The milk arrives on a loading platform as you've just heard. It comes into this

room and is stored in huge tanks, glistening clean. From those tanks, it moves along in glistening pipes to machines called homogenizers. From the homogenizers into pasteurizers, from pasteurizers in further gleaming pipes to more huge tanks. And then into a network of pipes to the bottling machines where the milk meets the bottles which enter this room from the bottle washing room. The milk is put in the bottles. The bottles are capped. The bottles go into the cases and out to you the consumer. That's the overall picture. Now we'll go down the floor and examine each of these processes in detail. We are now down on the floor of this most modern dairy plant or a close -up view of the equipment I've just told you about. Tom, what are these huge holding tanks and what have they used for?

These holding tanks keep the milk clean and cold until it can be pasteurized. You see it comes in faster from the country than we can pasteurize in the bottle. So it's kept in these tanks properly. Well, let us call them mixed up. There's the big type of, it looks like an airplane propeller inside. It's called an agitator. Made out of stainless metal that keeps the milk thoroughly stirred up or circulated so the cream doesn't rise to the top of the tank. In order to give some idea of the size of these tanks, maybe we could break it down into the ports of milk. How much does each tank hold? Each tank goes approximately 10 ,000 ports of milk. And as the milk comes in it goes into these tanks, then from the tanks, it enters the shiny, one of the stainless steel pipes. Yes, these are stainless steel pipes and the milk goes through these pipes over into the imogenizing units and then into the pasteurizing units. Oh, so imogenizing units are fascinating tanks. They're obviously machines milk to hold tremendous pressures.

One of that gave, say, 2 ,000 pounds or something like that. It says it's approximately 2 ,000 pounds. Mr. Flynn, the milk goes into these three valves that you see immediately in front of us. In those valves, the milk is forced through tiny, well, let us call them bowls. They're actually metal cores and under that 2 ,000 pounds pressure, the butter fed globules are broken up. I should say are crushed so to speak so that each drop of milk has the same amount of fat in it. There's as much cream in the bottom of a bottle of imogenized milk as in the top. And these machines themselves do an outsider from the outside look like huge furnaces, I guess. Then from the homogenizers they go back to the pasteurizers, right? Yes, the last step always in dairy plant operation is pasteurization. Louis Pasteur, the French scientist, found that by holding milk at 145 degrees Fahrenheit for 30 minutes, the proper pasteurization procedure was attained. With modern dairy science

and modern dairy engineering working hand and hand, we've now a machine which we call a flash pasteurizer. It's not quite the right name for it. It's a short time high temperature pasteurizer where we do a more efficient job that 161 and a half degrees for 16 and a half seconds. And the pasteurizers to me, I might just drive them as looking like huge radiators with a number of valves on top, a number of valves on the bottom. Well now we've faced the milk from the holding tank through the homogenizers, through the pasteurizers, into more shiny stainless steel tubes. And from here the milk goes to the bubbling section, right? Yes, that's right. It's going over to be bottled now in quartz, spines, affines, aff gallons, gallons and so forth. You know the thing that impresses me is I look out of this equipment and this beautiful room is the cleanliness. It doesn't seem to be a spot of anything. What's involved in keeping the room in the shape? The most important factor in derying

quartz is cleninous. From the time the milk leaves the cold, they're through the time it rises its own home. And this plant is one of the most modern, one of the largest in the world. One third of all the man hours spent in this plant by all of our employees are spending cleanup work alone. We have the white tile walls, the beautiful white ceilings, and the floors are kept perfectly clean. Everything is spotlessly shining all the time. I got a some man constantly operating a hose, although that's beautiful pile floor. What's he doing that for? He's keeping the floor wet so that no there's no possible chance of any dust floating around in the air. He's kept in other words when men walk across the floor, they walk on a dust -laden floor in some plants, but in this one it cannot be that way because the water keeps the dust down so that there's no dust floating around.

Now at the bottling end of this huge deri plant, we'll try to give you a words I picture of what's going on. We're surrounded by all sorts of pieces of equipment, they're bottlers of various sizes, and the bottler looks something like this. It's a circular machine with about 25 faucets shall we say, and it can hold an equal number of bottles. And as it goes around each bottle is filled. The bottles then move from that filling machine to a capping machine where the paper cap is inserted in the neck of the bottle. Then it goes along the track, all of this of course on an assembly line, a moving belt to the spot where a hood, a sanitary hood is placed over the top of the bottle. And from there it moves on down to a spot where crews of men place the bottles in the cases, the cases move again, along a moving track to a refrigerator rule. This is a simple explanation of what's going on, but Tom, I'm sure you

can give us more details on exactly what happens. Do you have any idea of how fast this bottling machine works or how many bottles it can fill in a day or an hour? Yes, Mr. Flynn, the quarter that we're reviewing now is called a vacuum filler. As the bottles enter there, the air is sucked from the bottle and the product that we're bottling, whether it be milk or dairy rich or chocolate drink, goes immediately into the bottle. We are filling approximately 85 bottles a minute as you see it being filled there now. From the filler, the bottles go into the capping unit where under pressure the inner cap is put on as you describe. Then the hooding machine puts on the waxed outer hoods. You know, it was funny in our grand mother's day. Milk was delivered from a scoop or into a pitcher and a pan delivered directly from the eight gallon can in the old days. It was left there on the porch early in the morning and maybe

if the cat or dog wanted a little bit, they helped themselves to it. Well, today we don't do things that way anymore. As you see this bottle that I'm holding in my hand has the put on the outside so that a cat couldn't even lick the outside. Your hand can't even touch the rim of the bottle. No rain or sweat or anything can fall into the bottle at all or into the capping area. Then as a secondary precaution, there is the inner cap, which I think is pretty wonderful this day and age. I'm standing now alongside the moving belt in which these cases filled with bottles of milk are moving into the refrigerated storage room. Whereas you say Tom, they'll be nestled in ice, right? Yes, that's right. They have been placed in these special cases. I should say especially washed cases. We have the washers outside the next room. Every case is thoroughly washed before it enters the plant. Products are put into the cases and the way they go to be snuggled in ice they're in the refrigerating room until delivery tomorrow morning before most of us are awake. Well, now as

I've been standing here, I've seen a man wandering around purposefully, picking up a bottle of milk here, a cart to milk there and disappearing with it. What's he doing? Yes, he's going into the laboratory, Mr. Flynn, with that sample to be tested in there. He comes out here every so often, takes a sample, maybe off the fort filler, the half -plant filler, maybe off the fiber -quart filler or other fillers around, takes it into the laboratory so we have a constant spot check of the products that we're bottling here at the moment. That's done all day long all during our bottling process. Incidentally, would you like to come in and see that being tested there in the laboratory? Yes, let's do that. Now we're in

the laboratory and we're going to talk with Ed Richter who is conducting the various tests on a sample of milk. Ed, I wonder if you'd tell us what's involved in sampling milk? Well, you get a sample from the filler, warm at that room temperature, and I taste the milk. I've watched you tasting this milk. I'm glad you like milk because you must have to taste an awful lot of it in a day. I do, I'm quite a bit. I draw 17 and 16 cubic centimeters of milk. And Ed is doing this as he tells us about it. I take it that tastes sample or pass the test because now you've drawn the milk and you're putting it into a test bottle. Then I add 17 and a half cubic centimeters of sulfuric acid, shake it up until it gets wine color. I always put the sample into the

shaking device which can shake quite a number of samples. And as I'm watching this sample of milk, I can see a turn color become darker and darker. What's happening as a changes color, Ed? Oh, that destroys all the milk solids, except the butter fat. Now we put it in a centrifuge over here. This is the machine that whirls the samples around at very high speed. 900 revolutions a minute and 36 -spile tester. I missed a Richter how long does the sample stay in that centrifuge? Oh, five minutes the first time now we add to still water to bring the butter fat up in the neck of the bow so we can read the butter fat in it. Now we take it out the centrifuge, put it in the hot water bath for five minutes, leave it set there for five minutes, and we take our butter fat reading. And by looking at the neck of that test tube bottle you can tell

exactly on the graduated scale what the butter fat content is. Yes, that's right. And you make these tests all day long. All day long. I have one personal question about how much milk do you think you drink as you go along making these tests in your working day? About three quarts a day. Well, Tom Adams didn't tell me this test we've just witnessed is this typical of what goes on in your various plants. Yes, we have 17 laboratories, Mr. Flynn, one in each of our 12 country receiving stations, one in each of our four city pasteurizing plants, and one in our general office building down in Ontario and South Street in Chicago. All of these are constantly checking and rechecking, testing and seeing to it all of these products are in the superior flavor standards up to those standards that we insist that they be up to now. As you saw one bottle coming in here just a few moments ago, a light bottle will also be on its way in a few moments to our general office laboratory downtown

to be tested there for various tests. This is just one test of many that we make to see that our products are of superior flavor and superior quality. Well, now we've been tracing the milk through the bottling plant through the filling of the bottles. Suppose now we adjourn to the spot where the bottles are cleaned and prepared to receive the product and examine that operation. These are the sounds of your milk bottles arriving at the woman plant ready to be cleaned so that they can again be used to deliver fresh milk to you some one of these days. Tom, what's the process? Now we've seen these cases of milk bottles arriving directly as they're left on the doorstep with a milk band to pick them up or return from lunch rooms and things of that sort. We happen to be watching a run now of one of these half -plains, aren't they? Yes, these are half -plains coming in. They're going to go into the washer. They're inspected as you'll see by the inspector there who is also loading the machine with these bottles. He's inspecting them to see if they're in perfect

condition. They might be dirty, of course, but they must be perfect even though they're dirty. They're going into this machine. They will not be out again for 30 minutes. They'll be washed seven times inside and out with revolving brushes, both inside and out with a brush's tool, of course. In hot water baths and 30 minutes from now. I'm watching this inspector as he checks the bottles coming in. Before they go into the machine at all, they're sort of pre -clean. That is if the bottle cap is on, it's taken off. This machine I would guess is what about 55 feet long? Yes, that's right, Mr. Smith. I'll make it guess. I'll say about 12 feet high and it is completely surrounded on the outside with the huge water lines, all sorts of bells and gadgets and whirling belts. As you say, watching these bottles enter now, they won't come out again and see the light of day for 30 minutes.

Yes, that's right. You mentioned these straws and caps in the bottles. They are taken out. Some people will leave straws or caps in bottles as a matter of habit. Those have to be taken off by this man before the bottles are put into the sterilizer in the washer here. I'm going to walk down now to the other end of the machine and get some idea of what happens in the process. I see that you're using tremendous temperatures here because I can feel them as we pass the machine. What's the highest temperature you use, do you think? I think it's around 165 degrees. I can open this machine for you in here if you'd like to see the interior of it. All right. You'll see the brush is going up and down in the bottles around the outside. I'll stand back. Well, here is something that would do the housewives heart good because this is the most tremendous dishwasher I've ever seen. Huge quantities of water under very extreme pressure and

very high temperatures moving over these bottles along with brushes and various portions. I think we can close the door now so that you and I can converse a little further, Tom. And as we move down toward the end of this huge washing machine, outcome the freshly cleaned bottles untouched by human hand, ready to move into the room we left just a few moments ago where they'll receive the various milk products. As you can see, Mr. Flynn, the inspector is again checking the bottles as they come out of this end. This is another inspector. These bottles are spotlessly clean. They're moving on a belt that we do not even oil. We lubricate that conveyor line with soap so that there'll be no oil or anything on the bottles and notice the stainless steel covers on the conveyors so the note dust can fall from the air into the bottles. These are going out directly into the filler. It might be interesting to note what the man is doing there. You see what he's

doing? He's taking out a bottle that does not belong to Bommonderry coming. That belongs to another dairy that will be put into a case sent back to the milk dealer's bottle exchange and return to its rightful owner. Now we're back outside again in the loading area where the cases of bottled milk and milk and fiber cartons are being loaded into huge super refrigerated trucks. They're really ice boxes on wheels and they'll carry the pasteurized and bottled dairy products to the distributing stations, 13 of them throughout the Chicago area. And in the morning the milk root salesmen pull their trucks up to these units, collect their cold fresh dairy products and hurry out to their roots and your home. This then is the story of milk. How long does the milk stay in that tester? We're left for five minutes the first time.