Yet more on labelling, I fear – but not this time on traceability or ‘may contain’ warnings, but on definitions. And you think gluten or nuts are complicated in terms of definitions and labelling? Just try milk….
So which misconception shall we get out of the way first? How about eggs? No, eggs are not dairy products, even though chickens have been known to roam around dairies. Eggs come from chickens, not from cows.
How about lactose? No, lactose free does not mean dairy/cow’s milk/animal milk free. Lactose is a sugar found in all animal milks (including human); it is not a protein or a fat, it is a sugar. Those who suffer from so called ‘lactose intolerance’ are not actually reacting to, or intolerant of, lactose – they just do not make enough of the enzyme lactase which would allow them to digest the lactose sugar. As a result, the lactose sugar ferments in their guts.
So, what are dairy products? Reasonably enough you would think that they are any products that come out of a dairy. OK – but who lives in a dairy? Well, the old thinking was that only cows spent time in dairies, although the many producers of goat’s milk, buffalo milk and almost any other milk might wish to take issue with that. However, that’s the way it was. So you could, confusingly but legally, call a goat, or sheep or buffalo milk product ‘dairy free’ because it was free of cow’s milk. No more.
But, although the regulations have, apparently, changed so that all animal milk products are now classed as ‘dairy products’ this has not been widely broadcast. I say ‘apparently’ as, despite some considerable time spent combing both the Foods Standards Agency and the EFSA (European Food Safety Authority) websites, I have not been able to find anything stating that ‘dairy’ now refers to all animal products. However, during a conversation I had last year with the now retired head of the allergen section of the FSA, Sue Hattersley, she told me that this was the case. And, during a Twitter debate on this very subject last week, Dr Chun-Han Chan of the FSA confirmed this. Given the potential for confusion here, it would be really nice if the FSA could put something clear and easy to find up on their otherwise helpful site.
(Thanks to the comment by DairyFreeBabyandMe below, I can now direct you to the right place in the Food Gov leaflet – P17 point 40. Not the most obvious….)
But of course, it does into stop there as, under the new regulations, the term ‘dairy’ has been ousted in favour of ‘milk’. This may not seem to make a great deal of sense either as most people tend to think of ‘milk’ as ‘milk’ – not as yogurt, or cheese, or ice cream, or butter or any of the other milk derivatives which they might normally have classed as ‘dairy products’! However, under the new reg.s, milk it is, so we had better get used to it.
Effectively what this means is that any ingredient which is made from or derived from an animal milk needs to be labelled with its name and ‘milk’ in brackets (and in bold) after it. And…. if the milk concerned is not cow’s milk, then you have to say so.
So a feta cheese should be labelled ‘feta cheese (sheep’s milk)’, a chocolate ice cream ‘Chocolate ice cream (milk)’, and, technically, butter should be labelled ‘butter (milk)’. However, the reg.s state that if you would normally expect the foodstuff to be made from animal milk (such as butter, cream or yogurt) then you do not actually need to add the (milk) – instead you have to highlight/bold the word butter (or cream or yogurt).
To be honest, even though having to add (milk) after butter may seem over the top, making assumptions about what the consumer does or doesn’t know about the dairy (milk) content of specific products seems pretty risky. What happens if you have a poor command of the language – or just a very poor awareness of what goes into foods and are actually do not realise that butter is made from milk?
So, just for the record and in case you don’t know, or the manufacuturer has failed to include (milk) in the ingredients list, the following are just a few of the many food stuffs which are either made from or derived from animal milk:
Butter, casein, whey, cheese, cottage cheese (although you might not know it by the taste!), Quark, cream, clotted cream, buttermilk, ghee, ice cream, yogurt, lactose, condensed milk, curd, kefir, kulfi, lassi, paneer, powdered/dried milk, many low fat spreads – and that is before you start on the very long list of foods which may have dairy/milk as an unlikely ingredient – such as a surprising number of plain potato crisps – and condoms, although they do not, I hope, class as a foodstuff!
Cartoon courtesy of Christopher White
I struggle to understand how this makes things clearer than they were before. And where do the new reg.s leave raw milk? Previously dairy products – that is to say anything made of cow’s milk – had to be pasteurised to be sold through the retail trade. (Farm gate sales are different, but we won’t go there). As ‘dairy’ referred to cow’s milk only, any other animal milk – goat, sheep, buffalo etc – could be sold raw perfectly legally. As all animal milks are now ‘dairy’, what is the legal status of raw goat’s milk for instance..?
This Food Gov guidance leaflet is quite clear, re. labelling, of various animal milks:
If you look at point 40 on p.17, it clearly states that all mammalian milk is considered as unsuitable for those with a milk allergy and therefore needs to be declared. The bit I find confusing, though, is that yogurt doesn’t have to be declared as a milk product – the assumption just IS that it contains milk. One poor mother on an allergy forum I visited this week hadn’t realised this distinction when she picked up a pot of baby food and was caught out with a poorly baby, because she didn’t see the word ‘milk’ mentioned anywhere! I think I would have assumed that yogurt meant dairy, but it clearly did’t click with her!
Oh well done you for finding the mammalian milk notice. I suspected that it would be somewhere but must admit that I had failed to unearth it.
That is also my concern – that people either will not realise that yogurt/cream are milk products – or, like your mother, they will have trained themselves to look for ‘milk’ and if it is not there in the ingredients list they will assume that the product does not contain milk….
The regulators would have got shouted at for stating the ‘bleedin’ obvious’ if they had made ‘milk’ obligatory for all milk products, but at least everyone would have known where they stood!!
The pasteurisation of milk does not feature in the regulations at all, I am afraid, as it does not change the nature of the milk. The issue with raw/pasteurisation of milk is one of microbiological safety – does raw milk contain bugs that are going to do you harm. A totally different set of regulations!
I feel we probably need to lose reference to ‘dairy’ when it comes to allergens and labelling, and stick to ‘milk’. Perhaps when thresholds come in for other allergens – and it’s worth reiterating that the allergen is indeed ‘milk’, not ‘dairy’ – surely it will be ‘milk free’ which will be defined, not ‘dairy free’?
Yes, I agree that we should consign ‘dairy’ to the rubbish tip – but I fear that it will remain the term of choice for many people for a long time – so I think we do need to be clear what it actually means these days!
It would be lovely if different types of dairy were differentiated – my daughter is intolerant to cow’s milk protein but not to goat, sheep or buffalo, but it isn’t always defined in a list of ingredients. And, yes, the one about eggs … I had a bakery assistant insisting to me quite aggressively that eggs were dairy, (we were trying to buy meringues), and when I assured her that they weren’t, she fell back on saying, ‘Well, lots of people who are allergic to milk are allergic to eggs as well’!