"Alex Rast" wrote in message
...
at Fri, 10 Oct 2003 23:13:19 GMT in
, (DRB)
wrote :
... In Kentucky, I was astonished to
discover that what was passing for "whole" milk back there had a
milkfat content of 3.2% !

And your point is? The average milk fat percentage of holstein milk
is 3.3%. Since greater than 90% of the cattle in the United States
are holsteins, 3.2% sounds pretty whole to me.

And therein lies an enormous part of the problem. Holsteins are a breed
specifically bred for maximum milk volume, with minimal attention paid to
taste or possibly even nutrition.

As the daughter of a cattle breeder, I attest to this. Cattle breeding is
incredibly, incredibly comple--and a lot of attention is paid to nutrition.
Milk volume is only *one* production trait. Currently, the most attention
is focused on protein content, with premiums being paid for milk that's
higher in protein. Also, a lot of emphasis is being put on increasing the
CLA's--healthy fats--in milk as opposed to the unhealthier polysaturates.
Just 10-15 years ago, there was an emphasis on butterfat, with premiums
being paid. However, as more and more Americans become health conscious,
there has been a demand with milk that has less fat and more protein in it.

As part of some reasearch for my Ph.D, I had to pull up some numbers on milk
fat percent from the late 60's/early 70's, and the fat content of holsteins
really hasn't dropped except by a few tenths of a point.

That may be acceptable for industrial
milk users, i.e. companies who use milk as an ingredient in other
products,
or who turn it into powdered milk, etc., but IMHO it's not a good standard
for milk that's actually going to hit store shelves. I don't deny that the
milk being supplied probably didn't have fat skimmed off, I'm saying that
when the focus, in milk production, brings us to breeding and feeding
programs that eventually produce milk of such low milkfat content, the
priorities of the system are very poor.

The priorities of the system are where they need to be. We are meeting the
demands of the majority of consumers. We are giving most of the people what
they want, and that's milk with less fat in it. It's the same same thing
with pork. Most people want the lower fat products. There are very few, it
seems, who want the higher fat stuff.



Raw unpasteurized milk is not what I want to drink.

I'm not saying that everyone should be *forced* to drink raw milk, I'm
just
saying that it should be made available as an allowable *option* for those
who wish it. Then they can choose the risks they take.

Then talk to the USDA about it. Should it be available to those who want
it? It seems so, but you also have the US Government trying to watch out
for the idgets in society who don't take the time to educate themselves
about the risk associated with raw milk.

My grandparents
also farmed, and my dad and uncle had an incredibly number of sore
throats and other illnesses until my grandmother bought a pasteurizer
when my dad was about 9. Immediately, they stopped being so sick.

While it's inarguable that drinking raw milk increases the risk of illness
substantially, I must say that many of the risks associated with it are
the
result of the poor sanitary practices often in place. If one were to make
raw milk available, it would have to be milked in carefully sanitized
conditions, within clean facilities, stored at appropriately low
temperatures, and delivered to the stores quickly.

These are requirements that all US Grade A dairies (dairy farms) must meet
to begin with. Only Grade A dairies can sell fluid milk for human
consumption.

This would make such
milk carry a high price premium. Not everybody would want to spend that
kind of money, but I would be, for one, and I think it's dangerous for the
industry to assume such a cost-driven attitude that only the cheapest
possible products are available to the consumer.

What I'm going to say to begin is that the dairy industry has tons and tons
of incredibly well-educated econimist, etc. We know how things need to run
for the industry to do the very best it can. We typically don't take kindly
to people who have no clue how the system runs to make suggestions.

The goal isn't for "the cheapest products available". Butter and many types
of cheeses are pretty pricey. The price that farmers get--and thus the
price of milk--is a supply and demand thing. Farmers also spend an ungodly
amount on feed. Most of them shell out the bucks to get the very best feed,
etc. available for their cattle. This means that the product you receive is
higher in quality.


My uncle and dad also still tell how they hated the unhomogenized
stuff. the way my uncle--now a 49 year old man--and my dad--now 51--
tell the story, it had to have been pretty nasty.

Different tastes. Also possibly different priorities. A lot of people find
the need to shake or stir unhomogenized milk an excessively irritating
inconvenience. Others probably find the very rich mouthfeel over-the-top -
too coating. But to make it unavailable, or virtually unavailable, to
those
who might want it is too restrictive. My main point was, though, that the
worst of it is that in its very unavailability, most people don't even
have
the opportunity to try it even to know whether they like it more or not.
The industry might say there were a lack of demand, but a large part of
this lack of demand, is, I think, the result of lack of exposure. People
who've never tried something have no way to know what they're missing.

The main thing here is the whole USDA and their regulations. Personally, I
think a lot more people would still stick to the homogenized/pasterurized
milk. There is a push towards "niche" markets--it really is the hot trend
right now-- and perhaps raw milk would be one of them. However, most of
these farmers don't want to risk having their license to sell milk taken
away from them, and thus their means of income. You have to understand that
these people have families to take care of, cows to feed, and loosing their
income source--even possibly their farms and homes-- would be catastrophic.


, but could they not at least use LTLT (low-temperature, long-
time) pasteurization? In this technique, the milk is only subjected to
relatively mild heating (140-160F) for a rather longer time. The
gentler process minimizes the change in flavour.

I think a lot of bottlers still actually use this process.... I know
UHT milk as to be labled,and I think the UP milk as to be labled too
(but not sure on the UP milk).

Usually they must label. But the label is invariably inconspicuous and
usually the containers have no other exterior markings (such as a
different
colour or shape) that would give the consumer the knowledge of what
they're
buying. If you take all the cartons of pasteurized milk off the shelf and
replace them with ones that to all external appearances look exactly the
same, with the lone exception that, somewhere on the label, there is in
small type an additional "ultra-" appended onto the "pasteurized" label
the
consumer has seen before, virtually no one is going to notice, even if
they
know the difference between pasteurized and ultra-pasteurized, which is
already unlikely. They might notice that all of a sudden the milk tastes
different than it used to do, but very few of them will make the
connection
between the altered flavour and the change in processing.

Perhaps their should be bigger labeling. Maybe write to your local
processing plants with your concerns.

As you can tell, you've stumbled upon one of my pet peeves...

In this day and age... It's just not feasible to do things like they
did a long time ago.

I disagree. Modern times don't require abandoning older methods.

What I mean about feasibility is stuff like selling bottles of milk with
really high milk fat. You'd have to have a bunch of jersey/guernsey farms
within a reasonable distance of each other to be able to get enough milk at
a central processing facility so that the facility could break even. I know
with the Guernseys--the breed that my family has--we had wanted to
bottle/sell "Golden Guernsey" milk like they did in the 50's, 60's, whenever
it was. It's been really hard to get it going, since there are so few
guernsey farms. The closest guernsey farm to ours is 3 1/2 hours! The one
jersey farm that's closest to us is 30 miles away, and between our two
farms, there isn't enough milk produced to make it economically
possible--ie. break even at least--to get it bottled and sold.

Smaller farms are the ones with the jerseys and guernseys, with a few
exceptions. Smaller farms are going out--partly due to economic factors,
partly due to younger generations wanting to do something other than farm.

There just aren't enough farms close enough together...

And before you say "it's because people want higher producing cattle", it's
not that entirely. There are a great many Jersey's and Guernsey's that milk
just as well, if not better, than holsteins these days. Holsteins are a
whole lot hardier of a breed though. Guernsey's have the tendency to give
up if they get sick... even a minor illness. Holsteins seem to have more
heifers... And, Holsteins just seem to hold up better in the long run. They
always have.. even 50 years ago.

a
case of rational use. You have to look at when a new method actually makes
sense and adds value, and when it's actually reducing the value, adding
extra effort, introducing irrational processes, etc.

As I said, the value of dairy products is supply and demand. At this
particular point in time, the majority of consumer demand is for milk high
in protein/low in fat. Therefore, low fat, high protein milk _is_ the most
valuable right now.

I think it would be argued that pasteurization is not an irrational process,
and that it's not that much of an effort.

And I couldn't be
further from a Luddite. Not only do I find new technology exciting and
fascinating, as well as useful, I work in an industry and profession
specifically associated with advancing the technological state of the art.
But I'm as violently opposed to the blind embracing of the new and modern,
as if newer were automatically better, as to the anachronistic holding on
to the past, as if everything were going downhill.

Pasturization could hardly be called a de-advancement. As for the rest of
it, like I said, it has to do with declining cattle numbers... (And, BTW,
the numbers of holsteins are dropping just as much as the smaller breeds...)

DRB