Is unsold milk recycled?!


Question:

Is unsold milk recycled?

I've noticed some cartons have an "A" beside the expiration date and some have a "B". Most of the A's date expires sooner than the B's. I may be WAY off on this but I sure would like to know. If not, what are the letters for?


Answers:
A or B is likely the production shift (A would be day and B would be night). Milk that doesn't sell is either destroyed or sent to be animal feed.

In my years of experience in dairy, I have never seen or heard of unsold fluid milk being recycled. In the time it sits on the store shelf it begins to undergo photo-oxidation and an increase in bacteria, both of which degrade the flavor. Adding it back to fresh milk would only cause the fresh milk to spoil faster.

Yeah - for chocolate milk - it is re-pasturized and flavored an sent back out.

they feed unsold milk to hogs, farmers also feed scraps from going out, i saw mike rowe feed it to hogs on dirty jobs on discovery channel

In Hokkaido, Japan, surplus milk is made into Bilk (beer and milk)

ビルク or Bilk is beer made partially with milk. This beer-milk or milk-beer beverage is sold in Nakashibetsu, Hokkaido, Japan. The idea came from a conversation between a 33-year-old liquor store owner Kazu Nakahara and his 63-year-old mother Shuko about how to use up the surplus milk in the dairy producing region of Hokkaido instead of just throwing it away. Nakahara approached a local brewery about the idea and developed this new variety of beer. A 330-ml (11 US fl. oz.) bottle is priced at 380 yen (approx US$3.15).

In North America, it is used to make glue, food additives, it is dried and whey extracted.

I worked in a number of grocery stores, it is illegal in both the U.S and Canada to resell a product after it is expired, and the "queenof_tartz" is way off, and if they did make it into chcolate milk it would spoil, as the milk sugars and the added ingredient would be unstable, I also worked as a chef here in Canada for 20 yrs and know my stuff.

Of course not! Spoiled milk can't be 'recycled'. Its usually sold to hog farms along with fat trimmed from meats in the butcher dept. I guess if you eat the pig that drinks the spoiled meat...then yes, I guess it is recycled.




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