This plant based fad...

[harm_less]

Our milk is so far removed from squirting a teat into a bottle that it can be regarded as a high processed food itself. Its water footprint and Fonterra's energy consumption speaks for itself in respect to "regular milk".

At least it is still pure milk. The pasturisation is essential for safety unless you are prepared to go to great lengths to keep the milk safe, but universal homogenisation seems to have crept its way in by stealth. I used to buy non-homogenised milk but decided that it's too expensive.

'Pure' is a debatable description as much of the milk sold in NZ is standardised by way of permeate. Some of the ultra low fat milk varieties in particular are a far cry from being pure milk and I have seen some pretty disgusting results from such milks going beyond their 'use by' dates and turning into a rubbery blob. I don't want to know what sort of processing leads to a product degrading to this degree and can well understand the popularity in raw milk outlets that are increasingly widespread throughout NZ.

And to dispel any misunderstanding that the energy consumption of Fonterra is due to pasteurisation processing this isn't the case. That consumption is largely due to the removal of water from milk in order to turn it into milk powder, the end product of much of our dairy farmers' milk.