[SCA-AE] Choc. Milk

[Alaxandair O'Conchobhair]

So with all this talk about Chocolate milk, is this our equivalent of
beating a horse to death?  We're just going to use cow instead?
<grin>

A.



On 5/24/08, Tim Button <tigranes at nep.net> wrote:
> Greetings from Tigranes,
>
>  Eirik,
>
>  The farm you worked at must have been quite different from our family farm
>  and those of our neigbors when I was growing up.  (It was in New York, which
>  may explain it, or very much larger than any of the ones around here)  We
>  and our neighbors were all members of a cooperative call Eastern Milk
>  Producers.  Eastern (and other co-ops) was set up to provide uniform service
>  and standards for the farms that belonged to the co-op.
>
>  Milk was picked up by an Eastern truck, then taken to a creamery where it
>  was tested, processed, then distributed to different bottlers, processors
>  (butter, cheese, etc.).  It was impossible to know where "our" milk wound
>  up, since it was mixed up with all the other milk from the other farms on
>  the tanker driver's route, then mixed with all the milk from the other
>  tankers at the creamery, etc. etc.
>
>  I don't understand why the concept of reprocessing seems so unusual as to be
>  deemed a "wives tale."  Huge quantities of milk are unsold by the "sell by"
>  date, and it would be an incredible waste of economic and environmental
>  resources to just throw it away.  The process is regulated and monitored by
>  the appropriate agencies, just as the milk that comes in direct from the
>  farms.  Not all of it is reprocessed into chocolate milk (the demand is not
>  that high), and not all of it is even processed into food items.  Glue,
>  paint, health and beauty products, etc. use milk, and not all of is is
>  obtained direct from the farm.
>
>  There are a lot of standard, govt. approved procedures in the food
>  processing industry that would make folks swear off the product if the whole
>  picture was known.  If the chocolate milk  subject causes this big an
>  uproar, let's never try to discuss eating sausage ; )
>
>  Tigranes