"Drinka Pinta Milka Day." The 1950s advertising slogan used to seem like a fairly straightforward piece of advice for maintaining good health. However, that was before the spectre of impending environmental doom began to colour every aspect of modern life.
In a move that has incensed Britain's dairy industry, civil servants have proposed that consumers should swap fresh, pasteurised milk for the UHT variety in a bid to reduce emissions from commercial refrigeration.
The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, which governs policy south of the border, has made the proposal that 90% of milk on sale should not require refrigeration by 2020. The plan, part of the so-called Milk Road Map, was described in a government paper sent out to the dairy industry last month to help it reduce its carbon footprint. Officials suggest that by reducing chiller capacity in supermarkets and corner shops, carbon emissions could be significantly reduced - though farmers fear this would lead people simply to buy less milk. (The move is not intended to reduce the use of domestic fridges; once UHT milk is open, it has to be stored as fresh milk.) It is unclear how such a change in buying habits would be achieved: regulation or advertising?
The news has been met with incredulity in Scotland. A spokeswoman for the National Farmers' Union (NFU) Scotland said: "It's not a good idea. If the idea is only to try to influence consumer choice, we don't see that working.
"People don't even like UHT milk. It's all very well not chilling, but ultra-heat treatment must surely use up energy."
The Holyrood government has power over rural affairs, so Scotland, she believes, will not have to adopt the measures.
The dairy industry is worth £6bn a year in Britain. At the moment, 93% of milk sold is fresh milk; the rest is made up of UHT, powdered and baby milk.
UHT is milk that has been heated to at least 135ËC to kill off harmful bacteria. It can then be stored in cupboards for up to five months. It was developed in the 1960s and became popular in Europe, where higher temperatures made storing fresh milk more problematic. In Belgium, UHT accounts for 96.7% of the milk market; in Portugal it is 92.9% and in France 95.5%. It never really took off in Britain, where consumers prefer the taste of pasteurised milk.
The average consumption of UHT in Britain is 11.5 pints per person, compared with 182 pints of pasteurised milk. In terms of nutrition, fresh milk and the UHT form contain the same number of calories and the same amount of calcium. For pregnant women, however, there is an important difference in folate levels (which help prevent birth defects): fresh milk contains nine times as much folate as UHT milk.
This latest proposal for the dairy industry comes in the wake of the recent threat of foot-and-mouth disease and bluetongue - and the ongoing battle to secure a fair price for milk. Over the past six years, one in three Scottish dairy farmers has gone out of business. It is expected that by the end of this year there will be fewer than 1000 dairy farms in Scotland. Twenty years ago there were more than 5000.
A more welcome development might be the renaissance of milk deliveries, driven by recycling-aware shoppers and those intent on supporting their local dairy industry. The website www.findmeamilk man.net has had more than 300,000 hits in eight months as people seek milk in bottles that can be washed out and refilled. The number of milkmen in the UK has fallen from more than 20,000 in the 1980s to the current 9500 because of competition from supermarkets, but it seems the tide may be turning.
The NFU Scotland spokeswoman said: "We think Scotland has a dairy industry to be proud of, and it's only just getting back on its feet in the last few months after years of dreadful prices. Offsetting carbon is great, but there are other ways it can be done.
"The industry is key to Scotland, so better to ensure its livelihood rather than try to bring it down. Farmers are under ever more pressure to maintain the highest environmental standards compared to 40 years ago when it was all about optimum production."
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