What’s In Your Milk Fat?

Sales in the organic milk market are increasing dramatically. That’s because organic milk means the milk came from cows raised humanely with access to pasture, who were never treated with artificial growth hormones and never ate feed treated with fertilizer. However, this explosion in the organic milk market has prompted some unscrupulous dairy producers recently to exploit this market and present non-organic milk as organic milk.

Scientists in Germany, though, believe they have developed an accurate test to determine whether milk was produced according to organic standards. The scientists analyze the milk fat’s “stable isotopes of carbon,” which they say are higher in cows raised on feed containing a higher ration of corn. More corn means the more likely the cows were raised by conventional milk production standards. Consequently, organically raised cows are fed more pasture feed, and the isotopes of carbon are significantly less. The scientists also look at the milk fat’s “alpha linolenic acid content,” which is typically quite higher in organic milk.

Read the scientist’s actual study: “Authentication of Organic Milk Using d13C and the a-Linolenic Acid Content of Milk Fat,” Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.

Also, just for fun, see Cornucopia’s ratings of organic milk in the market place.

Thank you to William Mitchell College of Law student, Mark Johnson, for preparing this post.