Early Industrialization
•1851 Jesse
William built first
cheese factory on his farm near
Rome, NY
•1893 First pasteurization plant,
Bloomville NY
I am probably the only one at this meeting who owns a cow. I
milk my own cows almost every day, in addition to writing for a
dairy publication and other publications.
Regarding early industrialization, we had the first commercial or
industrial cheese factory in 1851, and the first pasteurization plant
was in 1893 in my county, Delaware, New York. And I would
add that the process of heating milk to the point of pasteurization
does change some things. For example, at about 140 degrees
Fahrenheit lecithin is destroyed, and virtually all milk is
pasteurized today at much higher temperatures. It is not legal to
pasteurize it at less than 145 degrees Fahrenheit.
Care of the cow
brings good
fortune
I Ching
Per Capita Consumption of All Dairy Products 1909 - 2004
900
"wealth, cattle"
800
700
600
Pounds
500
400
300
Wilhelm, R. & Baynes, C.
200
Data Source: USDA ERS
100
Compiled by: John Bunting 10 06
19
0
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
2
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
09 912 915 918 921 924 927 930 933 936 939 942 945 948 951 954 957 960 963 966 969 972 975 978 981 984 987 990 993 996 999 002
I would just like to add to the evolutionary background that
I Ching, the oldest book on record, mentions the cow and that the
first symbol in the Runic alphabet, an early written language,
symbolizes both wealth and cattle.
Dairy cows first came to America in 1623, and served multiple
purposes at the time. They provided both meat and milk. The
males provided draft power. And just as they continue to do today,
cows converted non-tillable land, pastoral land, which was in
abundance in early America, and still is today, to a food that
humans can consume. And they also extended the growing season
by eating hay and other forage taken in. And importantly they
provided leather for many different uses.
Per capita consumption of milk is, relatively speaking, on the rise
somewhat in very disguised forms. The graph shows dairy
product consumption from 1909 through 2004. You can see that
consumption peaked a long time ago and has been declining. So if
it is purely milk consumption that we are concerned about, we are
drinking a lot less than we did at one point.
A Short Tale of the Cow and Dairy Products
John Bunting
1
Per Capita Consumption of Cheese and Fluid Milk 1970 - 2004
300.0
35.00
30.00
250.0
25.00
200.0
15.00
Pounds Cheese
Pounds Fluid
20.00
150.0
100.0
10.00
Data Source: USDA ERS
50.0
5.00
Compiled by: John Bunting 10 06
0.0
19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 20 20 20 20 20
70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 00 01 02 03 04
Fluid Milk
0.00
Cheese
There is a difference between the per capita consumption of fluid
milk and per capita consumption of cheese. And we're seeing a
great deal of increase in the per capita consumption of cheese, and
a significant decrease in the per capita consumption of fluid milk,
the beverage milk.
So the milk price drove the change of scale from a pastoral setting
in which cows grazed to the feedlot level of today. And scale
drove change from animal husbandry to artificial insemination
protocol. A typical Amish farm would have maybe 30 cows,
possibly 50 cows. A typical farm in California has 150 cows per
worker. So today you are dealing with an entirely different system
in many ways. The change in scale created problems that
“science” could solve. For example, more milk per cow plus
more cows per worker causes breeding difficulties. The solution
to that is something called timed breeding.
Until about 1970, dairy farming remained primarily pastoral, that
is, at the Amish level, you might say. There were small family
farms with maybe up to 50 cows and most had 30 cows. And then
a combination of factors, which had been building for some time,
cycled together to change the scale of dairy farming. You had the
Land Grant Universities, which like to count numbers and things
that can be replicated. You had breed associations becoming
active, meaning the Holstein breed, the Jersey breed and
Guernseys and Ayrshires. It so happened that the Holstein and the
Jersey breed associations were eminently active at the time. You
also had the beginning of artificial insemination (AI). The
combination of these factors allowed Land Grant Universities to
prove that with improved genetics through artificial insemination
you could make more milk, and this would be good. And I am not
quite certain why it would be good, but they believed it would be
good and promoted it. Politicians, on the other hand, gave lip
service to family farms, but the official policy encouraged an
industrial model. And this was done through the pricing
mechanism. In the early stages of the Reagan Administration,
milk pricing parity, which kept milk prices moving at the relative
rate of inflation, was eliminated. And what happened after that
was that if you were getting less and less for the milk you
produced, you had the choice of going out of business or
producing more milk.
The way to do it here is you count the days after the cows calve,
and when you get close to the first postpartum breeding period,
you inject 25 milligrams of prostaglandin (PFG), and 14 days later
you do it again. You do it a third time, then you breed 72 to 80
hours later. This is very good when you have unskilled workers
and cows that have numbers and not names. You can simply time
it. So it works out quite well, at least so they say.
Milk, Hormones & Human Health
October, 2006
2
from animal husbandry to AI protocol in dairy farming, we had a
move in cheese production from artisan cheese making with the
emphasis on art and daily variability to making something that is
standardized to the point where you now have cheese plants that
take in six million pounds of milk a day. The process is
completely mechanized with no human intervention. Basically the
milk is run through a big tube covering the various stages of
making cheese, then the curds drops down and the weight of the
cheese itself forms the press. But, in order to process such large
quantities of milk into cheese in this manner, you have to
standardize the milk for protein levels.
In the '80s we
standardized the nonfat dry milk (NFDM), powdered milk, and
condensed milk. None of which were too variable from what we
had consumed for many, many years. Then in the '90s we started
using ultrafiltration. Ultrafiltration is a process in which we
recycle milk past a membrane multiple times at about 50 to 55 psi
(pounds per square inch). Anything protein and larger is retained
on one side of the membrane, anything less than protein size is let
through to the other side of the membrane, such as water,
minerals, vitamins, and lactose.
There's a whole system called Ovsynch, which is a slight variation
on what hormones are injected into the cow and when -- to get this
timed breeding.
Today, there is significant use of ultrafiltration and for what is
called milk protein concentrate (MPC), which is a powdered form
of ultrafiltrate. Uses include low carb milk, HP Hood in this
region makes a product called Carb Countdown. Other uses
include processed cheese, Kraft singles, mozzarella and so forth.
If you eat at Pizza Hut, you are eating cheese made by Leprino that
came in as milk and four and a half hours later went out on a truck.
The product is frozen, and they say it must be used within 10 days
of thawing. And the reason for that is it just literally will not melt
properly, it won't work properly. What Pizza Hut does is spray
plant-based starch on the cheese and MPCs to retain the whey.
And what the starch does is scorch as it goes through the oven, so
that it comes out looking done. You see something that looks like
Elmer's glue with a brown surface coating that is considerably
different from quality mozzarella, which melts down.
Some of the hormones that are used are listed here and they each
serve different functions. The first two are the main ones that are
used in timed breeding, and, of course, it is believed that they pass
through quite readily into the milk.
There's been quite a change in milk processing from that early
pasteurization plant, and as I showed you, cheese consumption is
increasing dramatically. At the same time that we had a move
A Short Tale of the Cow and Dairy Products
John Bunting
3
Consumption of Cheeses Using UF & MPC 1970 - 2004
14.00
Data Source: USDA ERS
12.00
Compiled by: John Bunting 10 06
10.00
8.00
6.00
4.00
2.00
0.00
19
7
0
19
71
19
72
19
73
19
74
19
75
19
76
19
77
19
78
19
79
19
80
19
81
19
82
19
83
19
84
19
85
Italian
19
86
19
87
19
88
19
89
19
90
19
91
19
92
19
93
19
94
19
95
19
96
19
97
19
98
19
99
20
00
20
01
20
02
20
03
20
04
Cream and Neufchatel
The increase in cheese consumption has been primarily Italian
type, mozzarella, but there's also been a significant increase in
cream cheese consumption fueled by the popularity of bagels.
To conclude, mega farms and mega processors and the entire food
industry think that for any cause there is but one effect, that all
milk is milk. I would suggest that is not true. All milk is not the
same. So I would say complexities prevail.
DISCUSSION:
DR. WILLETT: One of the issues on the table is the milking of
cows while they are pregnant. It is more or less unusual in
mammalian behavior to be pregnant and lactating at the same time,
but this is part of the routine industrial process now. As I
understand it that practice has gradually evolved into standard
practice. I wonder if you are able to put some timeline to this?
MR. BUNTING: It also has evolved, I believe, with any milkproducing animal and I am not certain that humans cannot be
lactating and pregnant simultaneously. But anytime you increase
milk production, you are making it more difficult to conceive. The
normal routine with cows is that a cow gives birth, starts by
secreting colostrum, which helps with the immune system of the
newborn and the milk begins slowly to reach a peak.
Theoretically, the cow will be bred so that on the anniversary date
of her delivering a calf, she will deliver another calf. She is
pregnant for nine months, just a few days difference from humans,
so she is pregnant for a good period of the lactation cycle. And
then at the end of the tenth month the cows are, in theory, dried
off, meaning they are not being milked for about two months out
of that year. That doesn't really happen quite that way, and it
usually works out that the calving interval, as it is called, is about
13 months. With the introduction of rBST, genetically modified
bovine growth hormone, we saw a national push up to about 14.7
months between calvings. Having said that and introduced the
subject of bovine growth hormone, which, of course, studies show
increases the levels of milk IGF-1, the bovine growth hormone
might be the solution to the problem because I know of cows that
milk for 1,500 days without conceiving. There are farms that buy
heifer calves that have never been milked before, are about to
calve, and they milk them for three years without ever breeding
them back, and dispose of them for the meat value, and then bring
a new bunch in.
We have a 1958 law that says that any new product must be tested
for safety, known as Generally Regarded as Safe (GRAS). And
the FDA’s interpretation of that is to say, "well, you know, it really
is safe because it is made from milk, and everyone knows milk is
safe so how could it not be safe? It is safe." The FDA has not
required testing of MPCs with the exception of use in what are
called standardized cheeses, but says it is permissible to use MPCs
in nonstandardized cheese. Mozzarella is considered a
standardized cheese.
So to get around the safety-testing
requirement you simply change the name of the cheese to "pizza
cheese" and it is no longer standardized cheese, therefore it is a
permissible use. What they don't tell you is that it is only
permissible to use if the corporation producing it has done
extensive scientific study under GRAS, which nobody has done.
There have now been 105 patents granted for the use of MPC and
there are 149 at the application stage. Kraft Foods, the
predominant patent holder, can produce a processed, American
type cheese without remotely being near a cow or dairy country.
Most of the MPCs that are used in this country are imported. We
make virtually none of them.
DR. ROGERS: I will talk tomorrow about the production of milk
from open and pregnant cows. And, actually, the percentage of
milk that's produced here in North America from pregnant cows
has gone down considerably over the past few years. So we'll talk
about that some tomorrow. Because pregnancy comes later, as
you mentioned, and, of course, milk production is much higher
Milk, Hormones & Human Health
October, 2006
4
early in the lactation so now we're probably producing at least half
of our milk from open cows.
DR. BAUMRUCKER: The ultrafiltration of defatted skim milk
that they are processing is high quality protein. So I don't quite
understand what you are talking about with those MPC patents.
All this high quality protein is being put into many food products,
that those patents are talking about, either as stabilizers or to
increase the protein quality of that food. So I don't quite
understand what you are alluding to about this ultrafiltrate being
something abnormal.
MR. BUNTING: Well, it may be a number of things. It has never
been tested. And, for instance, I would suspect that it is not as
nutritionally available as the protein for example in raw milk
might be. I mean, none of the tests that I have seen on it have
indicated nutritional availability. Talking about increasing and
making high quality protein available is different from talking
about adding crude protein, which might not be nutritionally
available.
DR. BAUMRUCKER: The proteins in milk are very available
and very digestible.
MR. BUNTING: They are?
DR. BAUMRUCKER: Crude protein is only a measure that we
use, it is just an overall protein. The quality of milk proteins and
egg proteins are right there at the top. So it doesn't change in
terms of calling it crude. It is just a measure. Do you understand
what I am saying? It is still high quality protein. Now, that has
not been assayed for other things? The filter usually is about a
10,000 electro-weight cut-off. Growth factors or smaller factors
would not be part of that and probably not many hormones. But I
think I would agree, unless somebody in the audience can help,
have these powders been analyzed?
MR. BUNTING: No.
DR. BAUMRUCKER: I can tell you that they do get put back
into the dairy feeds. We don't feed the milk to the cows because
we want to sell it to consumers. The industry sells a milk replacer.
It is made from milk and these same products, and those have been
analyzed tremendously. So there is a wealth of information about
what we are feeding back to the calves in order to allow them to
grow.
MR. BUNTING: I don't think we are using ultrafiltered milk in
milk replacer, and most of the dairy proteins that go into milk
replacers tend to be nonfat dry milk and whey proteins. MPC is
too expensive to be used. The reason we feed milk replacer is
because milk itself is more valuable.
A Short Tale of the Cow and Dairy Products
John Bunting
5