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Columnist hits a nerve with some regional readers on dairy issues

It seems the last few weeks have stirred up some thoughts on a couple of subjects.  So, let’s open the mailbag:

Reading your story last week in Farm World on milk prices and drinking more milk. I would like to add my 2 cents’ worth. For catching a quick meal at a fast food place or having a night out at a restaurant, when you order your drink (coffee, hot/ice tea, soda drink), you pay a price and you have your drink plus free refill.

But if you buy milk you pay a price (with which you almost can buy a gallon of milk) you don’t receive any free refill, for you just have to buy another glass. SOOO, if they receive free refills they might drink more milk.

-Mike Hoover

Mike: You have a valid point that I have never had anyone ever bring up before.  Whenever I take my kids out for dinner, they always want chocolate milk.  I usually have the waitress wait until the meal to bring it so they don’t drink it all before dinner.

I don’t want the filling up before their dinner comes, and I don’t have to buy another glass of it. From now on, I’m going to ask the manager why milk, which is so much better for you than soda, doesn’t have a free refill. Maybe all we have to do is ask!
About the Cargill column:

Melissa – Really a great feature in the 10-14-09 Farm World pertaining to Cargill’s development of a non-dairy cheese.
-D. Robinson, Connersville, Ind.

Hi Melissa – It has taken me several days to calm down and try to think rationally about your article. Too bad Cargill isn’t thinking about the good of the users of this manufactured cheese.

At first I was thinking maybe they were using soy products, but I don’t think so. How can they possibly create a product that replicates AGED cheese? This does not make any sense to me. This is just another example of selling a product that has not fully been tested by anyone, including the FDA.

As far as I am concerned, any dairy product and particularly cheese, that is not made from the milk of cows, sheep or goats, is not worth using. They cannot possibly be replicated in any form of pure cheese. You are right, it just does not make any sense.

Didn’t think the veggie lobby was so powerful, but they sure seem to be, maybe just the most vocal though I am betting. I have known many “veggies,” but most ate dairy products.

Cargill cannot possibly be committed to the dairy industry while trying to oust dairy products at the same time, which it seems to me is what they are trying to do. Dairy producers, “watch your backs, the knife is raised.”

Keep us informed Mel, this is the only way people will find out what is really going on in our food industry.

-M. Willey, Onstead, Mich.

 Thanks, M. Willey! More of us need to keep watch on what’s happening in our food industry. As I watched the National FFA Convention last evening with keynote speaker Mike Rowe of “Dirty Jobs,” he mentioned that the general public has no idea where their food comes from or how it is produced.

He’s right – and if we as food and fiber producers don’t tell our story, someone else will. With money-laden groups like PETA and HSUS all too happy to tell their version of our story, I have to ask: Do we want to risk that? It’s time to tell your story, one person at a time.

The views and opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and not necessarily those of Farm World. Readers with questions or comments for Melissa Hart may write to her in care of this publication.

10/28/2009