Dairy Under Siege
Just a random thought for today:
I purchased a nice fat gallon of milk with which to temper hot coffee, and construct various forms of fatty pasta. With the glee of future dishes in my mind, I plopped it down with a pleasant “thunk” on the quickly bending metal of the rack rack in my refrigerator. With a flick of my hand, I tossed off the plastic rine holding on the cap, there to be left beside at least twenty of its brethren in the unused egg tray.
As I poured my self a glass of lactose, I noticed a glaring oddity staring right at me from the carton:
Please use by 7/28/05.
7/21/05 in NYC
An entire week. Does it bother anyone else that this city has the power to curdle milk at a faster rate than the rest of the Northeast?
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I always wondered about this, too! I would love to know the explanation.
Curious, I did a quick Google and found an explanation here:
http://www.yarnivore.com/francis/archives/000820.html
The Times City Section’s Q&A column once covered this. Their answer:
According to John Gadd, a spokesman for the city’s Department of Health, milk shipped to New York is more likely to stand unrefrigerated for brief periods, both before it reaches store shelves and also on the way from store to home. “It’s one of those uniquely New York sorts of things,” he said. “In other parts of the country, the expiration date is often 11 or 12 days after the date of pasteurization, but our experience and research have shown that here, 9 days is a reasonable threshold.”
Others disagree. Henry Beyer, a spokesman for New York State Dairy Foods, a trade group of milk wholesalers, said that refrigeration and processing practices have improved markedly since the nine-day expiration date was introduced “in the days of ice trucks,” and that it was more or less ignored until the Department of Health began a recent crackdown.
My friend Joe says it’s all the witches in NYC. Cause everyone knows, witches cause milk to spoil.
LoL, interesting observation..