Copper in Dairy Products and its Solution in Milk Under Various Conditions

There are many defects milk products that have been attributed by investigators to the presence of copper or other metals. Seldom is the directly from the metal itself but through what has been supposed to be a catalytic effect some of the milk constituents are broken down and compounds with disagreeable odor and taste are produced. In 1905 Golding and Feilman (1) described an alkaline mealy flavor which they found certain samples of market milk. The trouble was traced to the Use of a cooler from which the t was worn ~hus exposing a copper surface; the presence of small amounts of copper dissolved the milk together with the activity of certain organisms was believed to be the cause of the development of the peculiar flavor. The fact that the was noted only after about sixteen to eighteen hours gave proof that it was not due to the copper salt itself, but that the copper some way caused or assisted a change which resulted the formation of a substance which rendered the objectionable. Rogers, Berg, Potteiger and Davis (2) investigated very thoroughly the of butter obtained from cream which had been allowed to become contaminated with copper as well as iron. They found that in every instance the scores on the control butters were better than the scores on the butter made from cream to which copper had been added, even the small amount of 1 mgm. of copper per kilo of cream. Hunziker and Hosman (3) by allowing butter to stand contact with certain metals and their hydroxides found tallowiness developing invariably when copper was the metal. Palmer