Guide high-quality consumption to open up the dairy industry benefit chain

Focus on the New Standard of Restoration Milk Supervision of the Ministry of Agriculture

"Pure milk is also washed out with milk powder? No way?! " In a large supermarket in Beijing, the reporter randomly interviewed Ms. Han who came to buy pure milk. She said she was not aware of the problem of recovered milk.

Restored milk, also known as reduced milk, refers to the fresh milk sterilized and dried into milk powder, and then mixed with a certain proportion of water or milk reduced to liquid milk dairy products. According to the regulations of our country, reduced milk must be marked in the obvious packaging of the product. Popularly speaking, restored milk is milk reduced by blending with milk powder.

In recent years, more and more attention has been paid to the detection and identification of recovered milk in the dairy industry. In order to strengthen the supervision of illegally added restored milk, the Ministry of Agriculture recently revised the standard for the identification of recovered milk in pasteurized milk and UHT sterilized milk. The new standard takes furosine and lactulose as the test core, and officially implemented on April 1.

What is the difference between reconstituted milk and pure milk directly sterilized from fresh milk? The Ministry of Agriculture will issue new standards for the dairy industry

What is the impact of development? How to fundamentally revitalize the national dairy industry and protect the interests of dairy farmers? A few days ago, the reporter interviewed relevant experts in the dairy industry and the person in charge of dairy enterprises.

Focus standard: identify whether it contains reconstituted milk by the content of furosine and lactulose

From fresh milk to large packets of powder, and then restored to reduced milk with water, the recovered milk is nothing more than the product of solidification and liquefaction of fresh milk. And the truth is not that simple.

The reason why milk is known as the most nutritious food is that it not only contains fat, protein, vitamins and other nutrients, but also has bioactive substances needed for human life. It plays an important role in human growth and development, improving immunity and so on.

Bioactive substances have very stringent requirements on the living environment, and their activity will be greatly reduced if they are sterilized at high temperature. Pasteurized milk is widely accepted by consumers around the world precisely because it uses the mildest thermal processing methods to maximize the inactivation of pathogenic bacteria while retaining bioactive substances.

Fresh milk can be processed into pure milk by pasteurization or ultra-high temperature instantaneous sterilization (UHT), while recovered milk has to go through at least one thermal sterilization before it can be put on the market, so on the whole, the nutritional value of recovered milk is not as good as that of milk processed directly from raw milk.

How can we judge whether milk contains recovered milk? The content of furosine and lactulose can be determined.

Furosine and lactulose are both by-products in the hot processing of milk. In fresh milk, the content of furoic acid and lactulose is very low and is not affected by the changes of cow breeds and feeding environment. The content of furoic acid and lactulose in hot processed dairy products will increase greatly. The stronger the degree of hot processing injury, the higher the content, the worse the quality of milk. Therefore, the content of them is generally regarded as a sensitive index to reflect the degree of hot processing of milk.

The standard is based on this: whether milk powder is added to pasteurized milk and normal temperature milk can be determined by determining the content of furosine and lactulose in fresh milk, pasteurized milk, UHT sterilized milk and milk powder.

In fact, as early as 2005, in the notice on strengthening the production, Operation and Management of liquid Milk issued by the General Office of the State Council, it was clearly required that reconstituted milk should not be added in the production of pasteurized milk, while those who use restored milk in the production and processing of products such as sterilized milk and yoghurt must be prominently marked with "restored milk" regardless of the quantity, and the proportion of recovered milk should be truthfully marked in the list of product ingredients.

"restricted by technical means, management system, low quality of raw milk and other factors, the policy has long been introduced, but it has been unable to land for a long time." Chen Yu, an expert in the dairy industry of the Management cadre College of the Ministry of Agriculture, believes that in the past, it was impossible to accurately judge the heating degree of milk by testing corresponding indicators, and it was impossible to detect whether it contained recovered milk. The identification standard issued this time is specific and strict, which technically refines the strength standard of hot processing and makes up for this short board.

Standardize the market: maintain the law of high quality and high price, prevent Bad money drives out good

With regard to the new standards issued by the Ministry of Agriculture to regulate the testing and labeling of restored milk, it is generally believed that this is mainly for the consideration of protecting national animal husbandry and dairy industry, to open up the upstream and downstream interest linkage mechanism, and to enhance the competitiveness of national dairy industry.

In the past, due to the lack of testing standards and means, some dairy enterprises would not make clear marks on the packaging even if they produced reclaimed milk. On the one hand, consumers lack the understanding of high-quality milk, on the other hand, they are unable to judge the quality of milk, and they are relatively blind in the choice of products, which depends more on advertising, price and other factors.

"in the market, the law of high quality and high price is broken, acting on the industry, forming the 'Bad money drives out good' effect. Dairy enterprises that have advantages in upstream farming and are committed to high-quality milk production have not received sufficient returns. " Said Gao Lina, chairman and president of Modern Animal Husbandry (Group) Co., Ltd.

By adopting the mode of "zero-distance integration", modern animal husbandry saves the redundant link of milk processing to the greatest extent, ensures innocence and freshness, and has won the gold medal of the World Food quality Evaluation Conference for three consecutive years. However, on the dazzling shelves of dairy products in shopping malls and supermarkets, the high-quality milk of modern animal husbandry is placed together with the recovered milk produced by some dairy enterprises, so consumers have no choice. Therefore, Gao Lina has always hoped that the state can effectively regulate the production and labeling of recovered milk. The Ministry of Agriculture revised the identification criteria, she said that applauded that the move is an important measure of the supply-side structural reform of the dairy industry, is a signal to promote the improvement of milk quality.

"the identification standard has made specific requirements for the font, font size, area and so on of the restored milk logo. If the restored milk manufacturer is not marked and is reported, it will suffer a great blow." Chen Yu believes that Chinese consumers are still lack of understanding of reclaimed milk, therefore, the logo will have a great impact on product sales.

"adding milk powder does not affect the safety of milk, restored milk has its cost-effective side, should not be demonized, but dairy enterprises should be clearly identified to protect consumers' right to know." Gu Jiasheng, deputy director of the Dairy Industry Committee of the China Dairy Association, called for a rational view of restored milk. At the same time, he believes that for individual products, it is more objective to directly judge the inherent quality of milk and its products by the degree of thermal injury, which is also consistent with international standards. Accordingly, the processing technology of milk powder in China also needs to be upgraded.

Policy landing: there is still a long way to go from the introduction of standards to market norms.

After the introduction of the new standards of the Ministry of Agriculture, the reporter visited a number of supermarkets in Beijing and found that almost all brands of pure milk and yogurt were not marked with the word "restored milk", and their product ingredients were shown as "raw milk." only Wangwang milk is marked "recovered milk" in a prominent position, and very few yoghurts are described as milk powder in product ingredients.

From the point of view of production cost, the processing of recovered milk with large packets of milk powder is much lower than that of pure milk processed with fresh milk. The data show that the CIF price of imported large packets of powder has been maintained at 15000 yuan to 25000 yuan per ton for a long time, and the average price of fresh milk in China in 2014 and 2015 is 4.05yuan / kg and 3.45yuan / kg. It is conceivable that after a large package of powder is reduced to liquid milk, there will be a certain price difference with domestic fresh milk, so some dairy enterprises will not casually give up restored milk production, and it is extremely difficult for the new standard to land.

According to the 2015 Research report on the quality and Safety of Chinese Milk products (hereinafter referred to as the Milk Product report), China imported more than 1.93 million tons of dairy products in 2014, of which large packs of milk powder (including full fat and skim) accounted for more than 920000 tons.

In fact, according to the Milk products report, imported pure milk also had the problem of adding reconstituted milk: among the 4 batches of imported pasteurized milk, 1 batch was added reconstituted milk and 1 batch was non-pasteurized milk, and the average furosine in 46 batches of imported UHT sterilized milk was 227.9mg/100g protein, which was significantly higher than that of 196.1 mg/100g protein in domestic UHT sterilized milk.

Another deep reason for the difficulty of policy landing lies in the multi-head management mechanism of the dairy industry. "the new standard of the Ministry of Agriculture has improved the appraisal standard of recovered milk and safeguarded consumers' right to know, but the supervision responsibility of dairy enterprises in the production and market circulation does not lie with the Ministry of Agriculture." Gao Lina believes that in order to truly standardize the development of the industry, it also needs the joint efforts of many departments, especially the product regulatory departments should strengthen monitoring and disclose enterprises that fail to identify in accordance with the regulations.

In the long run, straightening out the management mechanism of the dairy industry is a hurdle that cannot be bypassed for the healthy development of the industry. At present, the revised identification standard has been highly valued by the State Administration of Food and Drug Administration, according to Song Liang, a senior dairy analyst.

Chen Yu is more careful about the impact the new standards will have on the industry. He believes that optimistically, this move can temporarily curb the import of large packs of foreign milk powder; but on the other hand, under the current market situation of relatively surplus domestic milk supply, if the road of spraying fresh milk powder is also blocked, it will deal a great blow to China's dairy industry. Further consider that if dairy enterprises clearly mark that the recovered milk uses imported milk powder as raw materials, or simply transfer the production and processing links abroad, under the current situation of consumers' lack of confidence in domestic milk powder, it will be even more detrimental to the development of the national dairy industry.

"fundamentally speaking, the development of China's dairy industry also depends on transformation and upgrading to improve quality and efficiency." Chen Yu said.

In-depth analysis: carrying out high-quality milk project to open up the upstream and downstream interest chain of dairy industry

0.5%! This is the failure rate of dairy products in 2015 announced by the State Food and Drug Administration, which is far lower than the 3.2% failure rate of the whole food.

"now, we need to pay more attention to the quality of milk, from worrying about safety to focusing on quality." Gu Jiasheng said that the key to the precious value of milk lies in the nutritional quality, and now the development of the dairy industry has reached the stage of improving the quality.

For a long time, especially after the melamine incident in 2008, consumers' attention has been inseparable from the bottom line of the dairy industry-safety. In fact, in recent years, China's dairy products are not only safer than other domestic foods, but also safer than dairy products officially announced by the European Union: according to the 2014 annual report of the EU's official food and feed early warning system, 66 of the 3097 substandard foods reported that year were dairy products, while a report released by China's Food and Drug Administration in 2015 showed that a total of 5541 batches of substandard food were detected in China. Among them, 44 batches of unqualified milk products.

Compared with the safety of the dairy industry, the current imbalance in the distribution of interests in the industrial chain, resulting in the low efficiency of dairy farmers, is another difficult problem to revitalize China's dairy industry.

"the price of pure milk is the same as that of recovered milk. Raw milk certainly cannot match large packets of powder, and dairy farmers can't get a corresponding return for their hard work in raising cattle." Tian Bingshen, director of the Bingshen Cow Cooperative in Muli Town, Gaoqing County, Shandong Province, told the reporter that a few years ago, members of the cooperative raised nearly 5000 cows separately, but now there are only 3000. If it were not organized in the form of a cooperative and unified management, I am afraid the number of dairy cattle will be even lower.

From 2008 to 2015, China's fresh milk production increased at an average annual rate of 0.8%. Last year, the output of fresh milk was 37.55 million tons, while the processing volume and consumption of dairy products increased by more than 6%. It is conceivable that more and more raw materials for dairy processing come from imports. The direct impact of the surge in imports is the decline in the breeding efficiency of dairy farmers. in recent years, the phenomenon of pouring milk and killing cattle has appeared in many places in China, and the development of national animal husbandry has been greatly impacted.

Wang Jiaqi, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, has been advising China to implement a "high-quality milk project", which he believes is the core link to solve the problem of low consumer confidence and imbalance in benefit distribution at the same time.

"consumers need high-quality dairy products, high-quality dairy products need high-quality milk raw materials, high-quality milk raw materials need standardized breeding technology, standardized breeding technology needs reasonable cost investment and return." In Wang Jiaqi's view, through the implementation of the "high-quality milk project," different links in the dairy chain, such as consumption, processing, and breeding, have changed from the original broken state to an organic whole, which can fundamentally solve the problem of unbalanced distribution of interests in the industrial chain. improving the breeding efficiency of dairy farmers is the only way to realize the overall revitalization of the dairy industry.