Dairy farmers want the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to halt what they call misuse of the word milk by alternatives. They claim too many consumers falsely believe they are buying real milk and its nutrients.
Josh Waddell, whose cow had just won Reserve Grand Champion Holstein, was unsurprisingly blunt in offering his views on whether non-dairy beverages should be labeled milk.
“Absolutely not,” said Waddell, who runs the 1,200-head Apple Shamrock Dairy Farms in Townville with his parents.
“Look up the definition of milk,” he continued. “These other products are lookalikes, they’re not milk.”
Tina Deeter of Deeter Farms in Titusville agreed. For Deeter, such drinks prove the old cliche about imitation being the sincerest form of flattery.
“It’s a compliment to real milk that other products use the term ‘milk’ in order to sell their product,” she said.
The decline in milk sales has hit Pennsylvania dairy farmers particularly hard, according to Jayne Sebright, executive director of the Center for Dairy Excellence, an advocacy group for Pennsylvania’s dairy industry, because most processing plants in the state rely on milk instead of other dairy products like cheese and yogurt.
Elsewhere, dairies are still recovering from a drop in exports to China and Russia a few years ago, said Leo Timms, an Iowa State University dairy expert.
Meanwhile, almond milk and plant-based food sales are growing by leaps and bounds. And that is a primary concern for dairy farmers, said Timms, along with their pride in producing real milk from cows, an American tradition for ages.
Back at the Crawford County Fair, some fair-goers offered recommendations of their own for alternative labels, some more appropriate than others.
Matt Beam, who milks about 100 cows each day at his fairy farm in Franklin, had an interesting option.
Rather than milk, he said, soy and almond beverages should use the term “byproduct.”
Source: Meadville Tribune
Link: http://www.meadvilletribune.com/news/farmers-agree-with-push-to-take-away-milk-term-from/article_19fe6c92-89da-11e7-9a9f-7791534bddd2.html
