Recently, I was sheepishly approached by a non-farming friend who had a look on her face like a little girl who had just gotten caught with her hand in the cookie jar. Knowing that I was a retired dairy farmer, she wanted to confess that a couple days before, she had carefully checked out all the “so-called milks” on display in the dairy case but came home with one that was not a product of Canada.
There are now nine different so-called milks that sit alongside our old friend real Canadian milk, that was produced by a real Canadian cow that has an electronic ear tag in her ear. That tag can trace her heritage back for more generations than most people can. It also traces every time she was sick, vaccinated, administered antibiotics when she was sick, every time she was inseminated, every time she calved and if she ever changed her address.
Milk from Canadian milk cows is not allowed to contain any antibiotics, bacteria and high somatic cells are not allowed in milk from Canadian dairy farms. If bacteria, antibiotics, sediment or even water is detected in milk, the farm it came from is severely penalized and may be cut off from ever shipping milk again. Synthetic growth hormones like RBST are not allowed to be used on Canadian milk cows.
Many milk substitutes have recently been displayed right beside milk in the dairy case. You may find soy milk, coconut milk, pea milk, oat milk, almond milk, rice milk, hemp milk, flax milk, tiger nut milk and cashew milk. Lately, milk is even being brought in from the United States.
Some people are lactose intolerant and are looking for a non-dairy substitute. Some Canadian dairies now sell a lactose-free milk which is put through a special filter that filters out lactose. Coca-Cola is even producing a dairy product that looks like milk. In their plant, they take the milk apart and put back more protein (probably from skim milk powder), less fat (they sell the fat that they take out as butter), remove the lactose and replace it with sugar. That product can be found on the dairy shelf right beside Canadian milk with the little blue cow insignia on the package.
Some of the grain-based milks still have pesticide residue on the grain that they are made from. Agriculture Canada has declared these products safe but some folks like me are still sensitive to even small amounts of this residue.
Milk made from nuts may have a rancidity problem. That being said, one of my friends has chocolate almond milk on his cereal every morning and he is more than 90 years old and healthier than I am.
Much of the imported milk is UHT milk. UHT means ultra high temperature pasteurization. This UHT pasteurization kills almost all bacteria and enzymes. Some of these are beneficial bacteria, essential to you maintaining a healthy gut. All pasteurized milk will have very little enzymes left which are essential to digest lactose, especially in lactose intolerant people. Before lactose pills were available, we have had families arrive at our farm with a letter from a doctor that explained someone in their family couldn’t digest pasteurized milk and recommended that they try raw milk from a dairy farm.
Our family has been selling milk for more than 125 years. For most of those years, the cows were milked by hand, milk was sold in glass bottles and it was before the pasteurization process was discovered. All of our families and thousands of babies in our community were raised on cow’s milk. Even though some organizations like PETA declare that people should never drink milk from another animal.
Our family used to consume two gallons of cold (2 degree centigrade) milk that came directly from our bulk tank. When our daughter moved away to college; we used one gallon of milk less each day in our home. Keena is still the tallest and healthiest of our family.
If you get milk that is off taste or bad, return it to where you bought it.
Canadian Dairy farmers are proud to produce a clean, healthy, safe product. Consumers deserve no less.
Don’t forget the milk. Look for the little blue cow and keep it cold.
Chris Judd is a farmer in Clarendon on land that has been in his family for generations. gladcrest@gmail.com
