Town Milk Put Tarboro on the Map: First city in the country and perhaps the world to operate a municipal milk plant

Via Sister Anne

In 1917, an outbreak of what was then known as “the summer complaint” — dysentery, typhoid fever, and colitis — swept through Tarboro, afflicting many of the town’s 6,400 residents and killing 13 children.

The culprit? A foodstuff found on nearly every breakfast table in town: milk.

The contaminated milk was traced to area dairy farmers, some of whom resisted pasteurizing their product, fearing the heat would ruin the milk’s taste and destroy its nutritional value. Although there were standards for pasteurization at the time, they were not enforced. “The darndest fight you’ve ever seen broke out between the town and the milk producers out in the county,” former Tarboro Mayor E.L. Roberson later told the Rocky Mount Telegram.

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