No Diet Liquid Protein National Dairy Council and Natural Milk Health.
Nothing's as Natural As Milk
I must make it clear from the start that this article is solely based around the use of the word "natural". I am not writing with any particular animal-welfare/anti-methane-production/anti-farmer/vegan agenda. I simply want to examine the use of the word "natural" by the marketing division of the National Dairy Council of Ireland.
Webster's dictionary defines the word natural as: "closely resembling an original, true to nature, having a form or appearance found in nature."
I read through the various websites related to the Irish dairy industry but, although the word "natural" appears often, it is never defined. After doing the research, in the context in which it is used, I have decided that the marketing definition of "natural" milk is:The opaque white protein and fat containing liquid produced by cattle that have been specially bred (by man), housed and fed (by man), given supplements, antibiotics and other necessary medications (by man), milked (by machine), that has been heated to 71.7 °C , stored and transported in large stainless steel vats, that is what we define as "natural" milk.
Raw milk may be more natural, but without the intervention of man it is much more of a health risk. On its website, the Food Safety Authority of Ireland states:"Drinking unpasteurised (raw) milk potentially exposes people to E. coli O157 and the risk of serious illness. The sale of unpasteurised cows' milk has been illegal in Ireland since 1997. However, many dairy farm families still drink raw milk. Farmers should not give visitors unpasteurised milk."
Breeding "Natural" Cattle
The vast majority of milk consumed in Ireland comes from cows. No big surprise there. But where do modern dairy cattle themselves come from? Cattle have been domesticated for tens of thousands of years and throughout that time, Irish farmers have selected the best heifers and bulls, breeding them to maximise milk yields and choosing those animals best suited to the Irish environment.
Housing and Feeding
Many Irish farmers house their animals in winter in large sheds. They provide silage and supplement the diet of cattle with various trace elements. If man left "nature" to itself, this feed would not be available and our milk would have different properties that those selected by man. Without human intervention, the cattle death rate would increase whilst milk yield and quality would decline.
Disease and Antibiotics.
This excerpt from the farming section of a recent Irish Independent newspaper shows just a tiny proportion of the effort that the modern farmer must put in to produce "natural" milk that is safe for human consumption. "At the farm, I did the usual tests on pulsation, vacuum reserve, vacuum level, and regulator leakage and neutral/earth voltage. All values were within normal limits. Next, I inspected the cell count data and about 10pc of cows were millionaires plus. Observation of milking was next on the agenda. Cow behaviour was good, but with 30 units and two operators in the 750mm angled parlour there was not much time for pre-milking preparation. "
Sterilisation
This piece from Wikipedia illustrates what man must do to "natural" milk before it is legal to sell it:"Pasteurization typically uses temperatures below boiling since at temperatures above the boiling point for milk, casein micelles will irreversibly aggregate (or "curdle"). There are two main types of pasteurization used today: High Temperature/Short Time (HTST) and Extended Shelf Life (ESL) treatment. Ultra-high temperature (UHT or ultra-heat treated) is also used for milk treatment. In the HTST process, milk is forced between metal plates or through pipes heated on the outside by hot water, and is heated to 71.7 °C (161 °F) for 15-20 seconds. "
Conclusion
It seems clear to me that if we take either of the two possible definitions of the word "natural", the standard definition, or the definition that I assume the National Dairy Council use, then there are literally millions upon millions of "things" on the Earth which do not undergo the above level of human intervention and they are all more natural than milk. Is the production of modern milk a natural process, requiring no human involvement? Ask any dairy farmer.
