milk
Consumers say milk exposed to LED lighting doesn’t taste as good
Grocers "might unwittingly sabotage the product they are trying to sell" by installing energy-saving LEDs in the dairy case, says Cornell. In taste tests, consumers—who prefer fresh and high-quality milk—gave lower scores to milk exposed to LED light for four hours than to milk that was days or even weeks older.
World’s biggest food company invests in milk allergy test
Nestlé, the world's largest food company, will pay up to $111 million to a French company in a deal to develop and market a milk allergy test for infants, says Reuters. The transaction "complements the company's market-leading infant formula business" and is part of Nestlé's expansion into health services, said the news agency.
Dairy farmers keep the milk flowing as prices fall
Good times or bad, milk production seems to go only one direction in the United States — up, which it is doing for the third year in a row despite a tumble in market prices. Economist Scott Brown says if the industry is unable to cut output, the only solution to excess milk supplies will be larger domestic and export demand.
Fewer U.S. dairy cows, but more milk
U.S. dairy farmers are breeding cows that are prodigious milk producers, says Harvest Public Media, and the exemplar is Gigi, a Holstein that produced a record 75,000 pounds of milk, or 8,700 gallons, in 2010.
Montana milk law stars in film on food waste
In the state of Montana, milk has to be tossed twelve days after pasteurization even though it can easily last up to 21 days. Storeowners can’t donate the extra gallons to food banks either. In the new film “EXPIRED? Food Waste in America” a team of researchers from Harvard investigate Montana’s spilled milk.
Dairy farmers fret as milk prices fall
Wisconsin dairy farmer Charlie Jones says milk prices have fallen by 30 percent this year, putting farmers like him in a bind.
World food prices lowest in nearly six years
Lower dairy and vegetable oil prices helped pull down the Food Price Index to its lowest reading since September 2009, said the FAO: "Prices for dairy commodities fell across the board, with milk powders being most affected, followed by cheese and butter."
Global milk production to fall slightly as market prices soften
Mammoth dairy in China to supply Russia
Chinese and Russian investors are collaborating to build a 100,000-cow dairy - the largest in the world - in northeast China to supply milk and cheese to the Russian market, says Farmers Weekly, based in England.
In top U.S. yogurt state, dairy farm workers are hard to hire
California is the No. 1 dairy state, but the popularity of Greek-style yogurt has turned New York into the top state for yogurt production, with more than 40 producers including Chobani, says the Los Angeles Times.
FDA finds few violations of drug residue rules for milk
Tests of milk from 2,000 dairy farms found almost all the samples -- more than 99 percent -- were free of drug residues, said the FDA in a constituent update.
McDonald’s opts for no-antibiotic chicken, no-BST milk
The largest U.S. restaurant chain, McDonald's, announced a two-year plan to stop serving chicken raised with medically important antibiotics at its 14,000 outlets. "Our customers want food they feel good about eating -- all the way from the farm to the restaurant," said McDonald's U.S. president, Mike Andres, in a statement. The environmental group Natural Resources Defense Council said the announcement was "a big step forward" in efforts to prevent over-use of antibiotics and...
Organic dairy farms – high costs, high consumer demand
Consumer demand for organic milk continues to grow. Annual sales growth is "still in the high single digits," write USDA economists Catherine Greene and William McBride in Choices, the agricultural economics journal.
USDA opens review of federal milk pricing system
The Agriculture Department announced a once-a-decade review of the milk marketing-order system, to see if the system, in use for decades, "should be continued without change, amended, or rescinded."
California dairies ask to join federal milk order
The three largest dairy cooperatives in California, unhappy with their statewide milk-pricing plan, petitioned the USDA to create a milk marketing order for the state, according to the news site Dairy Herd Management.
Small Ohio creamery aims to revolutionize milk
Snowville Creamery is a small operation with big ideas and run by a career dairyman, says Civil Eats. Says owner Warren Taylor, “I built a creamery to prove that we can produce good high quality, good tasting milk for everybody in America.”
Soda giant plans a premium version of milk
Coca-Cola, a giant in the world of soda and other bottled beverages, will launch a brand-name, premium milk, called Fairlife, in 2015, says Bloomberg.
Global warming could condense U.S. milk production
Milk production at the average U.S. dairy farm could fall by as much as 1.4 percent due to the addition heat stress on dairy cows from global warming in 2030 when temperatures could be 2 degrees Fahrenheit higher, says an Agriculture Department study.