Your Organic
Milk May Be 3 Times as Old as the Conventional Gallon
Two jugs of milk, side
by side at the grocery store on May 31: One has a sell-by date of June 11; the
other is labeled July 6. What’s the difference?
It’s a modern day supermarket riddle, but one that’s easily
solved if you know your pasteurizing principles. The
milk with the tighter sell-by date is conventional, whereas the gallon that may
still be at the store four weeks later is organic.
But the organic milk doesn't last longer because it's organic; rather, the extended
shelf-life is a result of UHT (ultra-high-temperature processing). In other
words, it's association, not causation: UHT does not make the
milk organic (non-organic
milk can be UHT pasteurized and organic milk need not be)—but
it does make the organic milk business viable.
But back to the
difference in shelf-life: Regardless of whether the two jugs are organic or
conventional, the difference in "sell by" date (a reference point
more important to shippers and grocery store stockers than consumers—because
once your milk is open, even if it’s organic, it’s best consumed within 5 to 7
days) comes down to the way the milk is pasteurized, which falls into two basic
processes:
·
HTST (high-temperature short-time) and
·
UHT (ultra-high-temperature processing, which
gets labeled as “ultra-pasteurized” on the bottle)
HTST is the "regular" sort of pasteurization, and it’s
what most conventional milk undergoes: getting heated to about 160° F for at
least 15 seconds. In UHT pasteurization (used to process most, but not all,
organic milk), the milk is brought to 280° F for 2 seconds. Both HTST and UHT
pasteurization kill, according to Organic Valley Brand Manager Eric Snowdeal, 99% of
the bacteria—but it’s the difference between eliminating 99.1% and 99.5%,
figuratively speaking—that makes HTST milk "in code" for between 16
to 21 days as compared to UHT’s 55 to 70-day range.
But any type of milk—organic or conventional—can
be pasteurized by either method, so why is organic milk
generally UHT whereas conventional milk is not?
The answer to that question has to do with buying patterns.
Organic milk—which comes from cows that have been raised according to organic
farming practices (the animals are never given antibiotics, artificial growth
hormones, non-organic feed, or GMO feed, and they must be let out to organic pasture for at least 120
days of the grazing season)—is more expensive to produce, priced higher on the
grocery store shelves as a result, and, consequently, turned over less quickly.
As Dr. Bill Weiss, a professor in the Department of Animal Sciences at The Ohio
State University's Agricultural Research and Development Center, put it, "Organic
milk is much more valuable than conventional milk: If it spoils on the grocery
shelf, it’s a significant loss."
Extending the shelf-life of organic milk via UHT pasteurization
alleviates some of the risk for producers and grocery stores: It's
okay if the expensive organic milk shipment isn't bought up as quickly as the
cheap conventional milk—thanks to UHT, it stays sellable longer. It's the same reason that, if you look
closely enough, you'll see that a lot of creams, organic or not, are also
ultra-pasteurized—another expensive product with a slow turnover rate.
"In the early days of the organic industry," Eric of
Organic Valley explained, "it was very difficult to go through a case of
milk with that amount of code left on it [before it could no longer be sold],
so by extending the shelf-life, it allowed retailers to work
through [that case] before it expired." A longer shelf-life also enables organic products to
reach "retail stores that didn't have enough foot traffic of people
looking for organic milk." They can ship the milk greater distances, expanding
the distribution of organic products into regions of the country that don't
have networks of natural food co-ops.
So if UHT processing extends the shelf-life of milk upwards of
three weeks,why not process all milk like this? In much of Europe and Asia, shelf-stable
boxes of milk—which only need to be refrigerated once opened—are ubiquitous. In
the US, however, “regular milk is generally not [UTH pasteurized] because
there’s no reason to extend shelf life; it’s turned over so quickly. And it
does change the taste a little—it is different, not better or worse.” According
to Scientific American, UHT
pasteurization "sweetens the flavor of milk by burning some of its sugars
(caramelization)."
When we tasted Organic Valley whole milk alongside Five Acre Farms whole
milk (local but not organic), the differences were easy to discern. But while
most of us noticed a more pronounced sweetness and distinct aftertaste in the
organic milk, no one had a super strong opinion: Even tasters who preferred one
over the other said they would not have noticed anything different about the
milk had we not been tasting them side by side.
Organic Valley's
consumer research has proven that customers like both organic and conventional
milk (there's no strong lean either way), which is why they produce both. Since
the "organic" label of milk is about the land usage and the animal
treatment, not the pasteurization process, there's no reason that HTST cannot
be used for organic milk, too—it just means the producer is betting on being
able to sell the high-priced organic milk quickly. In areas where the turnover
of organic milk is fast (a metropolitan area with a HTST plant nearby and a lot
of natural food stores, for example), it’s possible for Organic Valley to
provide HTST organic milk without fear of it expiring on the shelves.
Photo by Sophie - Whole Hearted
Eats
Next time you're at
the store, take a closer look at the expiration date—but don't read too much
into the multi-week difference: Remember that it comes down to pasteurization,
and not necessarily the quality of the milk. (But if you're going on a long
vacation and looking to stock the fridge with a gallon that'll still be good
when you get home, it's a safer bet to go with organic.)
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