Hey Iceblue, I avoid Coles/W milk and buy Riverina brand instead. It is almost twice the price but i believe it is a farmers co-op. Can you tell me if i'm right or am i wasting my money supporting the scabs?
Gavno I found " JONESY'S " milk in some Melbourne shops 2 litres of unmolested moo juice $4.50 shelf life of 4-5 days Well worth the extra $
Depends on how much it is processed the less the better, I dare say it would be as close as you can get. Milk is graded. Wont go into it but you have 5 grades Premium A grade B grade C grade D grade. Premium milk is pasteurized and sold as fresh full cream milk. A grade can be put into the above OR added to B,C,D which has high cell counts, it gets dried off into powder, kills the nasty stuff which is removed then rehydrated. This is the stuff the scabs sell. Its cheap. Farmers price moves with the grade also, Premium milk is payed the premium price, then the price moves down with the scale.
And NO I dont believe in bailouts. The farmers can bail themselves out by having the balls to stand up for themselves.
I used to like watch the discussions at uni between the students from dairy farms arguing over the govt assistance that areas that irrigated got over those that weren't irrigated. It was often quite heated at times.
I wrote this about half hour ago but it disappeared.... I'm sure the supermarket duopoly would prefer that we all drank UHT milk as it would be easier for them to manage. Just another reason to support your local dairy farmer. In the Hunter, when i don't get my source of raw milk i only buy Udder Farm milk which is a one family operation. In my area though i can only get it at a servo which is unfortunate.
Governments used to look upon their nation's dairy industry in the same way they saw their national airline, sporting teams and capital battleships. Something that MUST be supported as an expression of national pride and self sufficiency. Even the Gulf States run their own dairy industries as the safest and most reliable way to supply what is in essence a highly perishible product with a very limited shelf life. Unfortunately, These days, Aust. govts look on the dairy industry the same way it looks on airlines, sporting organisations & capital battleships.
Oh Iceblue you just revived a memory thankyou. Natural milkshake straight off the chiller scooped from the vat after bringing in the cows over frosty grass at sparrows, and taking a pitcher back to the house for tea, scones and natural unprocessed cream later in the afternoon. Wonderful indeed. I still remember my first taste of 'homogenised' milk which came in a carton (what no more cream at the top of the bottle!!). We hated it. Later I discovered that the homogenisation process smashes the molecules around such that the gut can absorb the elements of the milk directly to the bloodstream versus going through the digestion process. To cure a long list of 'modern' diseases I'd suggest that they look at 'modern' food preparation and presentation.
Correct me if I am wrong but I think you can buy milk pasteurised but not homogenised. Ill look into it.
iceblue, I do not believe in bailouts either. But I do believe that we as a community and government do need to support vital industries. Australia is approaching a critical point where self-sufficiency is not possible and this is the death sentence to a nation. All it takes is an interruption of supply, whether war, natural disaster, market forces, disease, etc and the consequences are catastrophic. This is one thing that the USA does understand and why there is some archiac regulation and laws surrounding some vital industries... best example is shipbuilding which is supported by the Jones Act(google is your friend). While there has been many attempts to abolish this act, the premis of keeping the act in place is that it keeps the US shipbulding industry alive, even at a huge cost to the community. Why is this important? Because there are industries that if left to die, the skills, infrastructure, tooling, and etc. would take years, if not decades to reestablish, which mean that if there was a crisis and the seemingly cheap and easily obtainable supply(ships built in Asia) were to become unavailable, the time lost to rebuild these industries locally to supply the community would be far too long to be able to avert the death of the community. Australia has become complacent and short-sighted. The loss of the manfacturing and industry could cause a mortal blow the nation. There would be no need for bail-outs if these vital industries were supported and protected. Correct me if I am wrong, but setting up a fully operation dairy farm could not be accomplished in less the 9 months, if the equipment, feed supply, heifers, infrastructure was readily at hand. Not mention the loss of animal husbandry skills that may have been lost. I see no way that in a crisis situation where the foreign(state or nation) milk supply was threatened, a reliable local supply could be reestblished in less than 12 months. Thankfully milk is not a required to stay alive, but a 12 month lag would cause some serious inconvenience. Do I think the dairy industry should be bailed out? At the very least QLD would be wise to put in place measures the protect and support their diary industry if the supply of milk is important to the QLD community.
Alexisio! think you may be right about ownership of Pauls..My point was that the brand Pauls milk was sourced from Qld dairy farmers. As a Queeenslander, what so you think of the idea of reintroducing free milk for children in Qld to help local farmers? Regards Errol 43
Dairy industry doesnt need a bailout, the gov needs to keep its beak out. The scabs need to pay a decent price for ALL FRESH PRODUCE. Even 10 cents a ltr more would make a lot of difference for the farmer. To start a dairy From scratch - if you bought heifer calves would take three years, with artificial insemination husbandry is less important.Some farms dont have bulls these days. These days is the cost, absolutely insane. For a decent dairy $10mil. Takes a lot of moo juice to pay that back!!!
Ahhh Julie when we catch up at a meeting again will bring some REAL milk in for you!! Just remind me too bring it, Am just about to make an orange mud cake thingy, chocolate gnash with fresh cream! Milkshakes - our kids love em!
It's not just the industry at risk. It's how we as sheeple have been managed into accepting low quality processed food as the norm. I used to get up at 5am and go fetch fresh milk. Cream that was so thick you could tip the tub upside down and it didn't fall out. Yogurt that made the shop stuff seem like plastic. I got a shock when I moved to the city. And there was no pasteurisation. This was all 15 years ago, but in a country with little regulation left. I now search and pay for good food. I became a foodie. But the masses of sheeple just buy the cheap junk and like it. That is control of the masses, through what they think is good for them. That is even scarier than the dairy industry failing, and the two are linked. Price driven down and we all believe $2 milk is okay and even if you told people how processed it was they would not care because they have been trained to be sheep. Any dairy near Caboolture that wants a donation or barter for fresh produce, PM me! I will barter some fiat or whatever you need! I'm not a conspiracy nut, I just think we have let our standards drop too much as a group. And with it comes eventual economic ruin.
iceblue, What is your plan to make 'the scabs' pay 10 more? With $10Mil at stake, it is going to take a brave dairyman to start dumping milk and not get that milk check in the mail for a week or two. 3 years to start a dairy scratch, seems to me that it would would be a wise investment to support such an industry. I seldom endorse regulation and government involvement, but having quite abit of family experience in the dairy, egg, broiler, and beef industry in the USA, there are times the free market is not supportive of these industries, especially if there is possibility for collusion in the distribution and retail sectors of the supply chain, and it is in the best interest of the community to intervene and usually this does mean using the government as the vehicle of intervention. Bailouts are not the answer as throwing money at a problem seldom provides a solution, but there would ways for the community and the government to support the dairy farmer without wasting taxpayers money(our money).
I'm an urbanite but love the bush and want farmers to be well paid, as in paid above the cost of their produce. 'Proper' milk was on its' way out in Sydney when I was a child, I was too young to appreciate milk in clear bottles that you could see propely, and really only know what I call anonymous m milk: in cartons and you can't see it until you're pouring it out to consume. I wasn't in favour of deregulation of the NSW dairy industry when it happened, and that wasn't John Howard I believe that was Bob Carr who also abolished shipping from one of the world's best shipping harbours on the pipe dream of having a walking path around the whole harbour (thanks Bob!). I continued to buy the Dairy Farmers brand for the last 10 years as that was the brand we had selling NSW milk before the deregulation. When forced to drink Coles or WWorths brand cheapies I can tell the difference, same as their cheapies bread and cereals - bland and worthless. I discovered thanks to the ABC earlier this year that Dairy Farmers was actually sold off at some time in the last few years to either Parmalat or Fonterra, the big international players. So the milk could come from anywhere. I still want local milk though, pasteurised of course. I was considering changing to Pauls as I thought it was still Australian and well sources but now I discover on this thread it's gone to the global winds as well. Don'r know what to do now.
