100 Years Ago: Ice Cream Meeting Turns Serious With Talks of Tuberculosis in Cow's Milk

A convention of the members from the local district of the Illinois Ice Cream Manufacturers’ Association met at 1:30 p.m. on January 21, 1926, in the Rose Room of the Mineral Springs Hotel. The meeting concluded with a banquet, also at the Mineral Springs Hotel. Representatives from surrounding towns, among them Litchfield and Jerseyville, “and a number of ice cream men from St. Louis.”

One of the main purposes of the meeting was to hold a reception for the president of the Illinois Association, E.J. Klinenberg, and the secretary, N. Loewenstein, both of Chicago, who were in town. An ice cream meeting sounds like great fun, but some of the topics were actually pretty serious. The main issue that the Alton Evening Telegraph reporter wrote about in the January 22 article was a discussion on the tubercular testing of milk. Bovine tuberculosis is different from human tuberculosis, but bovine tuberculosis can be transmitted to humans through dairy products and is especially dangerous for infants and children. “The manufacturers spoke unanimously in favor of state legislation compelling tuberculin tests of milk and expressed themselves in favor of a general agreement not to purchase any milk from producers unless it was subjected to tuberculin tests.”

From the Centers for Disease Control website on bovine tuberculosis (M.bovis), accessed January 20, 2026:

“People are most commonly infected with M. bovis by eating or drinking contaminated, unpasteurized dairy products. The pasteurization process destroys disease-causing organisms in milk by rapidly heating and then cooling the milk. This process eliminates M. bovis from milk products.”

“M. bovis transmission from cattle to people was once common in the United States. Thanks to over a century of disease control in cattle and routine pasteurization of cow's milk, this is much less common.”

This article is dedicated to Hayner Library’s amazing cataloger, Lauren Erwin. Special thanks to George Fuller for research help with this week’s article.

Sources

“Fight tuberculosis - obey the rules of health.” (ca. 1936-40). WPA poster. Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, WPA Poster Collection, LC-DIG-ppmsca-38342.https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/98513584/

“Ice Cream Manufacturers to Meet in Alton.” Alton Evening Telegraph (Alton, IL), January 20, 1926.

“Ice Cream Men Join Fight on Poison Milk.” Alton Evening Telegraph (Alton, IL), January 22, 1926.

“Ice Cream Men Meet.” Alton Evening Telegraph (Alton, IL), January 21, 1926.

Russell W. Currier, John A. Widness, “A Brief History of Milk Hygiene and Its Impact on Infant Mortality from 1875 to 1925 and Implications for Today: A Review.” Journal of Food Protection, Volume 81, Issue 10, 2018, Pages 1713-1722, ISSN 0362-028X,https://doi.org/10.4315/0362-028X.JFP-18-186.

U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “About Bovine Tuberculosis in Humans.” U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2026.https://www.cdc.gov/tb/about/m-bovis.html

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