UHT equals Green Milk?

Anybody drunk UHT milk recently, thought not, it is possibly the foulest tasting liquid available purporting to be drinkable.

It ruins Tea and makes Coffee taste awful and yet the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, DEFRA, which governs policy south of the border, has made the proposal that 90% of milk on sale should not require refrigeration by 2020.

The plan, part of the so-called Milk Road Map, was described in a government paper sent out to the dairy industry last month to help it reduce its carbon footprint. Officials suggest that by reducing chiller capacity in supermarkets and corner shops, carbon emissions could be significantly reduced - though farmers fear this would lead people simply to buy less milk. (The move is not intended to reduce the use of domestic fridges; once UHT milk is open, it has to be stored as fresh milk.)

So after having had the Dairy industry destroyed in many parts of the country we will now have to suffer UHT milk because it is "greener" what a load of cows manure.

UHT is milk that has been heated to at least 135˚C to kill off harmful bacteria. It can then be stored in cupboards for up to five months. It was developed in the 1960s and became popular in Europe, where higher temperatures made storing fresh milk more problematic. In Belgium, UHT accounts for 96.7% of the milk market; in Portugal it is 92.9% and in France 95.5%. It never really took off in Britain, where consumers prefer the taste of proper milk.

So what betting that the EU has got it's sticky little fingers all over this idea to allow EU countries to penetrate the British market for milk.

According to the Herald

This latest proposal for the dairy industry comes in the wake of the recent threat of foot-and-mouth disease and bluetongue - and the ongoing battle to secure a fair price for milk. Over the past six years, one in three Scottish dairy farmers has gone out of business. It is expected that by the end of this year there will be fewer than 1000 dairy farms in Scotland. Twenty years ago there were more than 5000.

A more welcome development might be the greater take up of milk deliveries, driven by recycling-aware shoppers and those intent on supporting their local dairy industry. The website www.findmeamilk man.net has had more than 300,000 hits in eight months as people seek milk in bottles that can be washed out and refilled. The number of milkmen in the UK has fallen from more than 20,000 in the 1980s to the current 9500 because of competition from supermarkets, but it seems the tide may be turning.

The NFU Scotland spokeswoman said: "We think Scotland has a dairy industry to be proud of, and it's only just getting back on its feet in the last few months after years of dreadful prices. Offsetting carbon is great, but there are other ways it can be done.

"The industry is key to Scotland, so better to ensure its livelihood rather than try to bring it down. Farmers are under ever more pressure to maintain the highest environmental standards compared to 40 years ago when it was all about optimum production."

I suspect this will be one green issue that will be rightly poured down the sink where it belongs.


Can Drinking Uht Milk Really Save The Planet (from The Herald )