Survey Of Retail Milk Composition As Affected By Label Claims
A trend in food labeling is to make claims related to agricultural management, and this is occurring with dairy labels. A survey study was conducted to compare retail milk for quality (antibiotics and bacterial counts), nutritional value (fat, protein, and solids-not-fat), and hormonal composition (somatotropin, insulin-like growth factor-1 [IGF-1], estradiol, and progesterone) as affected by three label claims related to dairy-cow management:
conventional, recombinant bovine somatotropin (rbST)- free (processor-certified not from cows supplemented with rbST), or organic (follows US Department of Agriculture organic practices). [Excerpted from article]
Some dairy products include labeling claims that include certain grazing practices for milk-producing cows or non-use of pesticide or antibiotics. Absence-claim labels imply that labeled milk is safer or better than unlabeled milk, because of relatively minimal consumer knowledge.
Conventionally labeled milk samples were examined from the 48 contiguous U.S. states, including conventional milk and those labeled rbST-free and organic. Analysis of these samples found:
- None of the milk samples had detectable antibiotics, though there were differences for bacterial counts — least for conventional milk, intermediate for organic milk, and greatest for rbST-free.
- There were no differences in milk fat, lactose, or solids among the labeled types.
- There were no differences in concentration of rbST in milk regardless of label type.