Swill Milk Kills

 

SWILL MILK KILLS  

May 1858, Frank Leslie's Weekly Illustrated 

depicted a nearly dead cow hoisted up off the manure covered floor in a New York City whiskey distillery "dairy farm" for one last milking.

    In May 1858, Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Weekly Newspaper, Harper Weekly’s major competitor, ran an early example of investigative reporting.  Many whiskey distilleries had a side business –dairy farming.  Well, not farming exactly unless you consider examples such as Johnson’s Whiskey Distillery on West 16^th St with three long barns housing 2,000 cows in narrow stalls fed nothing but Johnson’s used up barley and corn mash.  Heated scalding hot, it was sluiced into the troughs in front of the captive cows.  

    The stalls were not cleaned, so the cows had to lie down in their own manure and urine. When they stood up twice a day to be milked, the udders were not cleaned and neither were the milkers’ hands. 

Frank Leslie's May 1858 drawing of a distillery worker filling large cans for the daily delivery contractor.  The cans were seldom cleaned.

    Left to stand, “swill milk,” as it was called, formed a thin brown scum along the bottom of the unwashed pails.  Chalk, and chemicals to keep it “fresh” longer were added along with an egg to make it yellow and a little bit of molasses for sweetener before it was diluted one fourth by river water from the Hudson River near where run off washed down from the barns after a heavy rain. 

    Half stoned from whiskey mash and covered with sores on their udders there were a number of dead cows every day for local tanneries and butchers to buy for two or three dollars each.  The hides were generally more profitable than the meat which some butchers sold to poor immigrants.

    Finally processed, the “milk” was sent forth in hundreds of wagons emblazoned with slogans such as, “farm fresh, healthy and pure from Orange & Newcastle Counties” to be sold for four or five cents a quart.   

    The milk killed an estimated 8,000 infants in New York City every year.

    The average New Yorker assumed the milk came from farms north of town—unless they lived within a mile of Johnson’s distillery, or any of a number of other distilleries in New York City in which case, to mix a metaphor, the smell could be deafening.   

    Understandably, the magazine reporting raised an outraged outcry demanding an investigation by the New York City Board of Health. 

    But the outraged and injured did not count on industry tactics that would be used a bit over a century later by the tobacco companies and coal and oil companies—buy some politicians; buy some scientists; issue contradictory “scientific studies,” threaten lawsuits and just out and out stone wall and lie.

Butte (CA) Weekly October 20, 1866

The whiskey-dairy industry was still going strong on lies 8 years after the controversy started

    The Board of Health was chaired by Alderman Michael Tuomey, a ruthless, amoral political hack representing the city’s 14^th Ward.  I do not have the room to fully describe how bad Michael Tuomey was, but if you care to read the entire list of particulars, go here https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1878/10/29/80733332.pdf to read the New York Times’ ringing indictment against “Swill Milk” Tuomey’s re election in 1878.

    All members of the Board of Health went to investigate Johnson’s operation.  It was somewhat cleaned up the day the board showed up, Johnson having been forewarned by Tuomey.  The Board’s entrance was delayed when several members became overwhelmed by the stench and nearly vomited or passed out.  Inside it was worse.

    Tuomey and his minions on the board produced a majority report saying Johnson’s operation could probably benefit from slightly increasing the cows’ stall size and increasing the ventilation. (What! So, more stench could travel further?!) Otherwise, the Board of Health saw no reason for alarm. 

    Complaints such as water in the milk were answered with, "Of course, there's water in milk!  Who determines how much water?  It's the cow not us!" and, "Yes, we put chemicals in milk to preserve it longer, to keep it from going sour and poisoning you." Another answer was, "We can sell our milk cheaper because we're local and farmers from somewhere upstate have to pay the Erie RR to transport their product here" and “Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Weekly is just seeking to stir up alarm to increase circulation.”

    Suspiciously, few infant deaths were reported as being from tainted milk—the cause of death was generally set down by the Coroner’s Office (for which Tuomey ran in 1878) as diarrhea or dehydration brought on by summer heat.

    Three fourths of the milk sold in the city was to fancy restaurants, private chefs, etc. for baking and making various confections. Cooking the milk at least made it a bit less deadly.  

    One thing a cook could not do with swill milk was make butter or cheese from it—too much water had been added.  

    Even for the sanitary farmers outside of the city, making butter and cheese from whole milk became much less profitable with the advent of the railroad.  Processing so much milk to preserve it longer was no longer needed when the Erie RR started transporting their fresh milk into the city every day.  

    The railroad also forced the farmers to form a dairy farmers’ co op.  The association vetted agents who sold their milk on commission in the city, shared experience and expertise, and developed standard contracts.  One of the important things the farmers learned early was they had to cool fresh milk before it was sent anywhere to prevent it going sour quickly.  This had never been an issue before since most rural people bought or produced milk the same day it was produced.  The distillery city farms hated the association and did everything it could to discredit farmers’ milk.

Early laws and regulations to create safer milk were blunted by the primitive state of sanitation science and the unbridled corruption of the Gilded Age officials. Swill milk was produced and sold until 1894 when a wealthy New Yorker set up centers around the city which guaranteed safe whole milk daily.