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Comment by peterwwillis | Hacker News Reader

The milk quality in the US is fine, it's just different. Each carton has been pasteurized differently, then homogenized, fortified, and contains milk from thousands of cows. There are lots of other differences that affect flavor, mouthfeel, aroma. We may also use different cows, environment, etc.

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American milk also has anti-biotics and bovine growth hormone in it. I was fairly disappointed when they recently started allowing American milk to be sold here. Luckily it has to be labelled.

This is simply not true.

Milk is tested frequently and antibiotics are very rarely found [1]. Milk tankers that test positive for antibiotics are discarded and this milk never enters into the human consumption stream.

1. https://www.fda.gov/federal-state-local-tribal-and-territori...

https://bcdairy.ca/milk/articles/does-milk-contain-growth-ho...

>While the administration of growth hormones known as BST or rBGH to dairy cows is allowed in the US, it is illegal in Canada and therefore not permitted for use with any dairy cows.

https://www.healthcastle.com/what-you-should-know-about-milk...

>In both Canada and the United States, all milk sold must be antibiotic-free, so the issue is more about potential antibiotic-resistance than actually consuming antibiotics through milk. In Canada, a farmer who provides a dairy with milk containing antibiotics will have to pay for all expenses related to the milk that is thrown out. That means farmers take their commitment to providing antibiotic-free milk seriously.

There's another, simple reason which predates the very real concerns another antibiotic resistance these days; it's impossible to make cheese or other dairy products with even slightly antibiotic contaminated milk.

Source - grew up on a NZ dairy farm. Every milk collection from every farm was sampled and tested for bacteria, and antibiotics. Too much of the first, and you were penalised with a lower payment for a start. Any of the latter, and you paid for disposal of all the milk in the tanker load, from your farm, and the others it collected. This was thirty years ago, if anything it will be stricter now.

Solution was simple, look after the cattle, and keep the medicated ones out of the milking herd.

You have to search fairly hard in the States to find a jug of rBGH milk anymore. Maybe the absolute bottom of the shelf stuff if you're "lucky". I assume that milk is going towards cheese production and related industries instead.

Who tests this, the FDA or the ones with their income dependent on these test being negative?

Also the websites only talk about maintaining a database over this not that you need to discard the milk if positive.

The food industry has QC out the @$$ (until you get to the final step before the consumer where things can be hit or miss) because their margins are so thin for the volume that they move that you can't afford not to have really good process control. Letting bad stuff out for a week could put you in the red for a very long time going forward.

Nobody wants out of spec milk because it's not useful. You can't sell it because it will come back to bite you.

the homogenisation is the problem. and it's hard to find non-homogenised milk in the US.

US Milk also tends to be rather old by the time it reaches consumers, with ~2 weeks being surprisingly common. That has several implications which alter it’s taste.

Of course this varies a lot based on the store and product.

Milk in the US is only a couple days old by the time it's in the grocery store.

Unless most people in Europe are buying direct from the dairies, I can't imagine it's appreciably faster. Even then, I grew up having milk delivered direct from the dairy and definitely don't notice any difference between what I grew up with and what I typically buy in the grocery store.

I would guess most of the flavor difference comes from pasteurization differences, since Ultra High Temperature pasteurization appears to be the norm over there.

> Milk in the US is only a couple days old by the time it's in the grocery store.

Same for me. It took me a bit to figure out what was going on with this discussion and then suddenly I realized ..

The US is not a single system and actually the quality does vary a lot. I remember being in Florida and thinking why is the milk so weird.

In Denmark you can get milk at the grocery store that was inside the cow less than 24 hours ago. Ultra High Temperature pasteurization is not really normal in Denmark, but I think it is in Germany.

Its unusual for milk not to be UHT here in Spain.

I wonder if it's due to Spain being a warmer country and the milk spoiling more quickly.

Yes, that's the reason. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra-high-temperature_process...

They have fridges these days....

I miss UHT and homogenized milk since I moved to Denmark :( I loved being able to buy a six pack of milk bottles back in France and keep it in a closet for weeks, now I can barely drink a carton of milk before it goes bad.

While most milk in Netherland is pateurised and therefore keeps only a few days, there's also sterilised milks which keeps for months. Doesn't taste as good, though.

That really depends on the supply chain, but many stores do occasionally need to throw out old milk so you really need to consider how long the sell by date gives them to work with. Then add 2 days before pasteurization though this can legally be up to 5 days or in theory as little as 24 hours.

Just remember they moved to Ultra High Pasteurization because 2 weeks was simply not long enough.

UHT Milk is not normal in the USA outside the grab & go bottle sizes (1/2 liter): https://www.fredmeyer.com/search?query=milk

What is concerning is the high fructose corn syrup, kelp & skim milk blend that Darigold, Kroger and other US milk producers are advertising as Fat Free Half n Half: https://www.fredmeyer.com/search?query=fat%20free%20half&sea...

All the milk that are sold at my grocery store, no matter the size, is ultra-pasteurized. It's not unusual at all, in my experience. They sell common East Coast brands like Organic Valley.

(According to various sources I can find when googling this, there's no difference between ultra-pasteurized and UHT.)

Backing up the other comments, this also isn't true from anything I've seen in Ohio, Kentucky, West Virginia, or Pennsylvania. Seems like an issue specific to places where the demand for milk far outstrips the regional creamery supply.

But "not normal" is not correct, either.

Perhaps ultra-pasteurized is common on the East Coast? Its definitely not common for 1 gallon or half gallons in Washington, Oregon, California, Arizona, Idaho or Michigan (in my experience).

UHT is only for warm shelf milk here in Virginia, and maybe for some of the really expensive organic stuff that's shipped all the way across the country.

Many organic milks are UHT, but here in the Midwest most milk is not UHT.

> Just remember they moved to Ultra High Pasteurization because 2 weeks was simply not long enough.

That wasn't the idea. It was supposed to sit unrefrigerated on normal shelves. They haven't had great success with the product in the US as people don't trust non-refrigerated milk.

About two days old, after being stored at 39 degrees while constantly circulated. There's no indication that mass-produced milk in Europe is any "fresher", and if it's UHT milk, just forget freshness.

Milk can legally be up to 48 hours old before it it’s picked up from the farm. With ever other day pickups being very common and multiple milking per day some get’s close to that. It can then sit at the factory for another 72 hours before pasteurization though this uncommon. It then varies though Ultra High Temperature (UHT) gives you up to 70 days at this point.

That’s the extreme which would be very unusual, but buying milk that’s ‘only’ 2 week old milk is reasonably common. All it takes is knowing how long the sell by date is after pasteurization and another ~1-2 days to get to that point and you can find how old this stuff is.

>buying milk that’s ‘only’ 2 week old milk is reasonably common

Do you have a citation for this by any chance? I've had a quick Google but no luck. Been interested in average food quality differences in US and EU since the "chlorinated chicken" news in the UK.

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