If the milk is bottled after pasteurization, there remains opportunity for reinfection, possibly with typhoid bacilli. Pasteurization in the final container, the bottle, is being recommended. This is possible only when a special bottle is used with a metal cap lined with paper.
=Milk distribution.= Until within recent years in the cities and at present in smaller towns, milk is largely retailed from cans which are carried on the wagons or are kept in stores. This exposes the milk to contamination from street dust and from the container furnished by the consumer. It is well recognized that every utensil with which milk is brought in contact adds more or less bacteria to it, and the less milk is handled, the better will be its condition when it reaches the consumer. Milk is now largely retailed in glass bottles which are closed with pulp caps. In some cities the bottling is mainly done in the country at the bottling station to which the milk is brought by the farmers; or it may be shipped by the producer to a distributing company, and all subsequent treatment, as pasteurization and bottling done in the city.
Milk plants are now generally equipped for the rapid and economical handling of large quantities of milk in a most sanitary manner. The bottles as they are returned from the consumer are washed in a continuously-acting automatic washer which washes, rinses and sterilizes the bottles without their being removed from the cases in which they are carried on the wagons. These machines are effective, if not run at too rapid a rate, so that the bottles are not exposed for a sufficiently long period of time to sterilize them. The bottles are then filled and the paper caps inserted by machinery. The caps can now be obtained from the manufacturers in sealed tubes in which they have been sterilized so that the contamination from this source is avoided. The shipping cans are washed and sterilized with live steam, and in many plants are thoroughly dried, by passing hot air into them. Under these conditions they then reach the farmer with none of the musty and disagreeable odor that frequently is present when the can contains a small quantity of water, condensed from steam.
The top of the milk bottle over which the milk is poured is exposed to contamination from the hands of the deliveryman. Trouble from this source can be avoided if the consumer cleans the lip of the bottle before removing the cap. The better grades of milk are dispensed in bottles, the top of which is protected by an additional cover of paper or tin foil which reaches to the neck of the bottle and is held in place by a crimped metal band.