Question H

[Jonetta]

We learned about pasteurization in this story. Were you aware that babies used to die from bad milk? Had you heard of swill milk and the challenges of feeding cows if you were located in the city?

[Phrynne]

I knew about milk being bad for us before being pasteurised. I had never heard about swill milk and the challenges of feeding cows if you were located in the city. I always thought the cows were kept near the city and the milk transported in. I learn something new from every one of these books!

[Jonetta]

It was news to me, too, about the dairy farming for cities and swill milk. You have to really lack a conscience to do that to babies.

[Robin]

I didn't know anything about bad milk and dying babies. I did know it was dangerous to drink unpasteurized milk, but I didn't know the extent of the damage.

[Charlene]

The swill milk truth is quite sickening (no pun intended).

Of course, in the 1970s, I boycotted Nestle for sending infant formula to third world countries where women thought using ditch water to just take on a whitish caste was enough nutrition for their babies. No one instructed them on the correct proportions of clean water to powdered formula and poverty caused them to stretch it out. Babies starved this recently. I still try to avoid Nestle, and I hate it when they buy up companies whose products I have used.

[Jonetta]

I didn’t know this about Nestle’s history, Charlene. Thanks for sharing this info.

[~ Giulia ~]

I knew about pasteurization, even if it seems the issue with swill milk was more than that. I never imagined they kept cows in the city. (Those poor cows!) Not to mention of course the countless children that got sick. Those people really were unscrupulous criminals even if the law left them mostly unpunished.