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Mr. Justice McKenna delivered the opinion of the court:

    Error to review a judgment of the supreme court of Wisconsin sustaining the validity of an ordinance of the common council of the city of Milwaukee, regulating the sale of milk.

    The ordinance provides that no milk drawn from cows outside of the city shall be brought into the city, contained in cans, bottles, or packages, unless they are marked with a legible stamp, tag, or impression bearing the name and address of the owner of the cows, and unless such owner shall, within one year from the passage of the ordinance, file in the office of the commissioner of health a certificate of a duly licensed veterinary surgeon or other person given authority by the State Live Stock Sanitary Board to make tuberculin tests, stating that such cows have been found free from tuberculosis or other contagious diseases.

    A short time before the ordinance was to go into effect this suit was brought against the city and Dr. Bading, its health commissioner, to restrain the enforcement of the ordinance.  After a hearing, judgment was entered, dismissing the complaint, and the judgment was affirmed by the supreme court of the state.

    The plaintiff (we shall so call him) alleged that he brought the suit for himself and all other producers of and dealers in pure, wholesome milk, as it involved a question of common interest to many persons.  He alleged also the following:  He is a farmer, living about 17 miles from Milwaukee, and maintains a large dairy herd of cattle, and is enjoying a profitable dairy business, shipping milk into Milwaukee to certain retail milk dealers in the city.  His herd is healthy, so far as he is able to know or judge.  He keeps his stables wholesome and clean, and if his cows become sick or affected in any way with any infectious or contagious disease, so far as he is able to learn or discover by giving careful attention to his herd in its feeding and care, he removes such animals immediately.  So far as he is able to discover, his herd is absolutely free from disease, and the milk he offers for sale is and will be, so far as he is able to discover, absolutely pure and wholesome;  and all that proves to be impure and unwholesome upon being tested in the usual and customary manner will be withdrawn from sale.

    Bading, as commissioner of health of the city of Milwaukee, threatens, on and after April 1, 1909, to execute the ordinance, and confiscate, forfeit, and destroy all milk shipped by plaintiff and other producers to be sold in Milwaukee contrary to the requirements of the ordinance, unless restrained; and if he does so irreparable injury will be caused plaintiff and such other producers, and make their business of maintaining a dairy absolutely unprofitable as well as impracticable.

    The tuberculin test required by the ordinance is, as plaintiff is informed and believes, wholly unreliable, untrustworthy, and entirely worthless so far as being a guide or protection to the public as to whether or not the cows tested by it are free from the germs of tuberculosis or any other infectious disease.

    The milk threatened to be confiscated, shipped to Milwaukee for sale by plaintiff and other producers, when pure and wholesome, is not dangerous to public health because, perchance, the owners of the cows producing the milk have not had the cows tested, or have failed to secure the certificate of a veterinary surgeon or other person, as required by the ordinance.

    Plaintiff also contends that the provision of the ordinance which requires milk that does not conform to its requirements to be confiscated, forfeited, and immediately destroyed, takes his property without due process of law.

    To sustain his contention, he assumes the purity of his milk, though it has not been tuberculin tested, and then asserts that "milk of this kind cannot be confiscated and destroyed simply because it is not accompanied with a certificate of a veterinary surgeon or of some person authorized by the Live Stock Sanitary Board of the state of Wisconsin, as provided by said ordinance, certifying that the tuberculin test has been applied."  But plaintiff overlooks the allegation of his complaint.  His allegation is not that his cows are free from infectious or contagious disease, but only "so far as he is able to learn or discover."  And the allegation of his willingness to withdraw tainted milk from sale depends upon the same contingent knowledge or information.  He overlooks also the findings of the courts against the sufficiency of his information, and their demonstration of the necessity of the tests established by the ordinance.  But even if the necessity of the tests be not demonstrated and the beliefs which induced them may be disputed, they cannot be pronounced illegal.  In Laurel Hill Cemetery v. San Francisco  we expressed the deference which must be accorded to local beliefs, saying that we would not overthrow an exercise of police power based on them to protect health merely because of our adherence to a contrary belief.  It will be observed, therefore, that the contention of plaintiff is without foundation, and that the ordinance is not an arbitrary and unreasonable deprivation of property in a wholesome food, but a regulation having the purpose of and found to be necessary for the protection of the public health.

    The police power of the state must be declared adequate to such a desired purpose.  It is a remedy made necessary by plaintiff acting in disregard of the other provisions of the ordinance--that is, failing to have his cows tested and their milk authenticated, as prescribed. The city was surely not required to let the milk pass into consumption and spread its possible contagion.  This seems to be the alternative for which plaintiff contends, and might occur.  All milk produced outside of the city had amounted, the supreme court said, to 3,500 eight-gallon cans daily.  Criminal pains and penalties would not prevent the milk from going into consumption.  To stop it at the boundaries of the city would be its practical destruction.  To hold it there to await judicial proceedings against it would be, as the supreme court said, to leave it at the depots, "reeking and rotting, a breeding place for pathogenic bacteria and insects during the period necessary for notice to the owner and resort to judicial proceedings."

    We agree with the court that the destruction of the milk was the only available and efficient penalty for the violation of the ordinance.  . . .  In other words, as the milk might be prohibited from being sold, at the discretion of the board of health, and even prohibited from entering the city, a violation of the conditions upon which it might be sold involves as a penalty its destruction.  Plaintiff sets up his beliefs and judgment against those of government, and attempts to defeat its regulations, and thereby makes himself and his property a violator of the law.  In North American Cold Storage Co. v. Chicago, 211 U.S. 306, we said, that food which is not fit to be eaten, "if kept for sale or in danger of being sold is itself a nuisance, and a nuisance of the most dangerous kind involving, as it does, the health, if not the lives, of persons who may eat it."  And it was decided that in such case the food could be seized and destroyed, and that a provision for a hearing before seizure and condemnation was not necessary.  It was also decided that the owner of the food had his remedy against the arbitrary action of the health officers.

    It is however, said the plaintiff is precluded from such remedy because the ordinance expressly provides that the health officers "shall be held harmless in damages" for their acts "if done in good faith."  It may be that that portion of the ordinance is separable if invalid.  The supreme court of the state said it was not necessary to pass upon the provision.  What view it might entertain it did not clearly express.  In determining the validity of the provision the court said that it "must assume that the ordinance is otherwise valid," and that it could not presume that plaintiff would disregard the ordinance held by it "to be valid, or place his property in a condition to invite its destruction."  Self-inflicted damage," the court added, "is not recoverable."  The open judicial inquiry is in such case:  "Was the damage self-inflicted?"  In other words, as we understand the court, a question upon that portion of the ordinance has not yet reached a justiciable stage.  There is certainly no destruction of the milk impending.  Indeed, according to the allegations of the complaint, there is a threat only, to be executed if plaintiff should take milk into the city, which though he alleges he is anxious to do, he may not do.

    Judgment affirmed.

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