Marketed as an ideal food, especially for children, large-scale production and distribution of milk ramped up around the same time that Mount Desert Island was enjoying the height of its Gilded Age in the 1880s. Increasing numbers of summer people, hotels, and restaurants meant increased food production to meet those needs. But raw milk was risky, possibly contaminated by a number of diseases. Although there was never a case of milk-borne disease documented on MDI, summer residents insisted on high standards and inspection of island dairies. Village Improvement Associations hired inspectors to ensure quality control, but summer people were often reluctant to pay the increased costs, until farmers took matters into their own hands, forming MDI Dairies, a dairy cooperative giving local farmers more control of their product. But market forces eventually won out, and island dairies are a thing of the past.