2014 Field Moms at Dean's Dairy
Huntley, Illinois
Have you ever noticed that there are a couple different brand choices when you are buying milk? I’m talking about the plastic gallons and half gallons that take up at least a couple of refrigerated cases at the supermarket. Usually, there is the store brand, which is cheaper by quite a lot, and there is a name brand that is more expensive. Have you ever wondered why the name brand costs more? Is it better quality? Or is it marketing?
I’m here to tell
you, it is marketing. Keep your money in your bank account and buy the cheaper
milk. It very well could be the exact same milk that is in the bottle beside
it. You can even check this and I’ll tell you how! You may be amazed.
I’ll tell you how
I’ve learned this – I’ve seen it with my own eyes. Yesterday, Illinois Farm
Families took the Field Moms on a very special tour of Dean Dairy in Huntley , Illinois
What we saw was this.
All of the milk comes to the bottling plant via tanker trucks directly from the
farms. Many farms test their milk at least once before it goes into the tanker
truck and the certified truck driver tests the milk again before it is put into
the tanker. At the plant, before it leaves the truck, the milk is tested for a
long list of criteria, including things such as anti-biotics, water, titratable
acidity (spoilage bacteria, a.k.a. sour milk), microscopic cell count
(increased white blood cell count would indicate milk from a sick animal) and
taste. It is then pumped into raw milk silos and further pumped into the plant
for processing and more testing. The milk goes through a series of steps to
homogenize and pasteurize it before it is bottled. The plastic bottles are made
on site just before the milk is bottled, which is fun to watch and it only takes
just over six seconds to make a bottle. The new bottles run overhead on a
conveyor belt that winds its way all around the enormous bottling room until
they come down the line to the bottling machine. After the milk is in the
bottles, the labels are attached to them. Much to our surprise, the labels were
not all Dean’s labels! There were actually about nine different brand labels,
many of which I see when I shop at various stores around Chicagoland, including
two very common store brands, Market Pantry and Jewel.
So, why does the
price vary? Many times a store will use milk, a dietary staple, as a loss
leader to bring us into their store. While we’re there, we will spend money on
a few other things. Often, you will notice the store brand is cheaper because
they are using the milk as a loss leader and may be just breaking even on the
sale.
How can you find
out where the milk came from? Easy. You can do it on your smartphone while you
stand in front of the milk. We all pay attention to the sell by date. Usually
right along with the sell by date is a code, the location on the container may
vary depending on the product. It starts with 2 digits and those digits
represent a state. Illinois ’ code is 17-, Wisconsin is 55-, and Indiana
Another interesting
fact we learned is that most milk gets from a farm to your refrigerator within 48
hours. That’s fast. It’s also kept very cold (about 38 degrees F) except for
when it is pasteurized. When it comes from very large farms, with a thousand
head of cows or more, it is actually very possible that the milk could be in
your refrigerator about 24 hours after it came from the cow. At very large
farms, their milking operation may run 23 hours a day (there is always a 1-hr down time for cleaning and sanitizing) and they can pump
directly into a tanker truck. When the truck is full, say in the early morning,
it goes to the bottling plant, is tested and bottled, and can be shipped out to
a retailer later that same afternoon. If it’s put in the refrigerated case that
evening and you buy it, voila! It’s virtually fresh from the farm milk!
Our family drinks
four gallons of milk a week. No joke. We love milk. So that extra savings of
even just a dollar a gallon adds up!
