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 )

DEFRA staff to be made Redundant

In the usual show of joined up Government displayed by Gordon and his Labour Party I see that amongst those being made redundant due to cuts imposed by Gordon are members of DEFRA who are currently on secondment in Animal Health, where annual leave has already been canceled in October, as they work to contain foot and mouth and bluetongue disease.

The unions are not exactly pleased with this either, Mark Serwotka, general secretary of the Public and Commercial Services Union, said:

"Making people compulsorily redundant at the same time as the department is working around the clock to contain the foot and mouth and bluetongue disease outbreaks is ridiculous and unnecessary.

"This move to compulsory redundancies raises fears that more could follow in greater numbers.

"With a civil service-wide ballot for industrial action beginning at the end of the week, the time is now for the government to intervene and offer guarantees on redundancies, pay and privatisation."

(image courtesy of the The Spine)

First compulsory civil service redundancies announced | Whitehall | Guardian Unlimited Politics

Beckett attacked on farm payments

The Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee called the handling of the new Single Payments Scheme an

"embarrassing failure".

accoding to the BBC. They then went on to complain Mrs Beckett and senior officials had not been held

"personally accountable"

for delays.

In other words they should have been sacked. Their actions could cost us the Taxpayer up to £500 million so this is no minor oversight. This does not include the costs, stress and misery to the farmers because of the delays on payments. The MPs' report said:

"A culture where ministers and senior officials can preside over failure of this magnitude and not be held personally accountable creates a serious risk of further failures in public service delivery."

So let's see what's happened instead of sacking the idiots responsible for this. Oh yes that nice Mrs Beckett has towed her caravan across to the Foreign Office and been promoted to Foreign Secretary where she is now even deeper in the mire and dragging us with her.

Labour "government" at its' best.

P.S. After writing this I thought I'd just pop over and see what Wat Tyler had to say on this at Burning our Money He certainly has done some work on this subject and I'll point you here for more info. The final sad touch though was the P.S. at the end of the first article:

PS Let's hope somebody more competent than the horse lady is working on extracting our marines from Iran. If it's left to her, they'll still be there this time next year. Maybe we could swap her for them.

God but that's so true.


BBC NEWS | Politics | Beckett attacked on farm payments