Reconstituted Milk For Town Supply Suggested

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30042, 29 January 1963, Page 15

Reconstituted Milk For Town Supply Suggested

Dairy scientists in New Zealand had suggested a cheaper alternative to the present scheme of ail-the-v ear-round production of fresh nil* for town supply, says Mr M. G. HoUard, senior lecturer in the animal science department at Lincoln College, in a Canterbury Chamber of Commerce agricultural bulletin. M:lk treatment stations could reconstitute milk solids to replace fresh farm milk in part or even in full. These milk solids could be produced more cheaply from seasonal dairy farms over the spring, summer and

autumn months. The ingredienrs would be dried skim milk powder in conjunction with frozen cream or unsalted butter as a source of milk fat.

Outlining advantages of the system, Mr Holl&rd said that the cost of milk would be much less than at present. Milk reconstituted tn the minimum standard of 3.25 per cent butterfat and 8.5 per cent solids-not-fat would cost about 19d a gallon at the milk treatment station at present values for dried skim milk and tor butter. If milk were reconstituted to 4.1 per

cent, butterfat and 8.8 per ««>*. sokds-not-fat, which wee about the average compoeition of New Zealand town nulk supply, the cost a gallon at the factory would be leas than 26d a gallon compared with 34.173 d for fresh ndik st the factory door JJ“ def the present scheme. This alternative scheme would reduce the subsidy of £4,353,572 on town rrvUr by

Nutritional Value Further, the nutritional value of reconstituted milk would not be significantly inferior to that of fresh milk. The taste of fully reconstituted milk might be slightly different from that of fresh milk, but there was little doubt that, with experience, a taste would be acquired for the substituted product. To secure a good flavour bottling plants would only use the highest grade of spray-dried skim milk powder. Already New Zealand was producing more than 40,000 tons of dried skim powder every year, and it would not require a large adjustment to the spray-dried milk industry to provide the dried non-fat solids required for reconstitution of town milk. Ample supplies of

deep frozen cream or of butter would be readily available to provide the butterfat required. This course of action could help develop new markets for New Zealand’s dairy products. Setting up of reconstitution plants in countries without adequate dairy industries was part of the plans of the New Zealand Dairy Production and Marketing Board. No doubt a successful reconstitution industry in New Zealand would provide both valuable publicity and precedent. A flourishing home industry would also guarantee that New Zealand was in the forefront of technological advances in processing milk. Costs might also be reduced on the distribution side of the town milk business, and going a stage further technology might soon produce a full cream milk powder which, without additives, could be instantly dissolved in cold water. Solids-not-fat

Earlier in the bulletin Mr Hollard suggested that the seasonal problem of a lower than standard solids-not-fat content of milk in some districts might be overcome by the addition of skim milk powder to town milk at the treatment stations to bring the milk up to the required standard. This, he said, would be a considerably cheaper solution than forcing alterations upon an otherwise adequate milk supply organisation—through breeding, management or feeding. There was no technical, nutritional or economic argument against this course of action, he said.