Where is my milk from?
By Karina | March 8, 2010
I stumbled across this neat webpage that non-vegan readers may appreciate: the Where is my milk from? page. I am excited to find this reference, because as someone who tries to lead a more thoughtful omnivorous life, it’s nice to be able to double check and verify where the food I buy at the grocery is from. As they say over at The Kitchn, “Do you know where your milk comes from? Whether you’re trying to eat local or just curious about the origin of your milk, yogurt, or cottage cheese, the site Where Is My Milk From? will help you identify the city, state, and dairy where it was processed.”
Now the word “processed” is a big one – there are some pretty big things that happen at this big scale – namely, milk from bunches of cows and bunches of dairy farmers is mixed together to create various consumer products. So even if you do know where your milk is processed you still have no idea where it actually CAME FROM, nor how well the animals are kept. But this is a small but important step towards granularity of information on the consumer level.
I plugged in the milk in our fridge – it is Garelick Farms All Natural 1% Lowfat Milk (no artificial growth hormones) and it says “From Local Farms to Local Families” on the back. When I plugged the code into the website I got back “Dean Ne Llc Dba Garelick Farms Ny, Rensselaer, New_york. To compare that to the back of the jug, it says “Dist. by Garelick Farms Inc, Franklin MA.” Now, if I google maps the towns, we’re looking at 95 miles from my house to Rensselaer, and it’s 195 miles to Franklin MA. You can see how, if you’re just going on the “distributed by” labels on the back of the milk, it is really hard to get an exact idea of which product is *really* local. In our fridge I also checked a can of aerosol based whipped cream (it was a dire necessity when we had the power out and a dinner party simultaneously – I will whip egg whites by hand, but cream is just too horrible) – the can is a grocery store name brand (Hannaford, based in Maine) but the code on the bottom says Morningstar Foods Inc, Delhi, New_york.” Another situation where the dairy is much closer than the distributor! Also,
But what is really exciting is the container of Trader Joe’s organic yogurt actually comes from “Stonyfield Farm Inc, Londonderry, New_hampshire,” which is REALLY cool, because I am always worried when I buy things from Trader Joe’s that they’ve been shipped all the way out from California – and also, Stonyfield Farm is a well trusted yougurt producer who I LOVE, and it’s nice to know I’m still eating their product.
I tried to track down where this came from but all I could find is this site claiming it is a bunch of kids from Brigham Young University. So I can’t tell you the motivation, but it appears to be just a bunch of people who want to make it easier to get between federally collected information and the consumer. I am a fan!
Of course, this is a stopgap until I am able to find a local milk producer and find the time to make all of my own yougurt at home… that is, of course, the ideal.
[[Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/garlandcannon/ / CC BY-SA 2.0]]
Topics: Food | 1 Comment »
That’s so funny–I’ll whip cream all day long but am intimidated by egg whites.
Now to look up some of my own dairy products…