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Thoughts That Go Bump In the Night
James Dudlicek
(847) 405-4009
The carbonated beverage
giants are continuing their push into dairy territory. Coca-Cola is
pursuing a controlling interest in Bravo Foods, makers of the popular
Slammers fortified, flavored milk co-branded with comic heroes and other
youthful pop culture tie-ins. Meanwhile, Pepsi has unveiled its Quaker Milk
Chillers line.
So while Pepsi is launching its own milk offering,
Coke is apparently abandoning its own efforts in favor of acquiring someone
who’s doing it right — both in the face of school systems
seeking to banish nutritionally vacant sodas from student menus, new
milk-friendlier federal school nutrition guidelines and studies showing
good-tasting milk in fancy packaging sells well among the young.
I say “bravo!” to Bravo for building up a
company so successful that one of the big guys just has to have it. And
kudos to Coke for giving up on the frankenmilk products and jumping on the
real dairy milk bandwagon.
But dairy processors better make sure consumers
don’t forget who was there first.
As the FDA considers whether to lift a voluntary ban
on selling food from cloned animals, trade groups for both dairy processors
and farmers are leery about introducing milk from cloned cows to consumers.
“There’s a strong general feeling among
our members that consumers are not receptive to milk from cloned
cows,” the IDFA’s Susan Ruland told the Associated Press.
“This seems to be one of the things where technology seems to drop
something in the lap of the food companies. “It’s not driven by
the market or any benefit to the consumer.”
The NMPF told AP it “does not at this time
support milk from cloned cows entering the marketplace until FDA determines
that milk from cloned cows is the same as milk from conventionally bred
animals.”
That’s a relief. Two-thirds of American
consumers responding to a 2002 Gallup poll said cloning animals was
“morally wrong,” and a March survey by the International Food
Information Council reported that 63 percent of consumers likely would not
buy food from cloned animals, even if deemed safe by the FDA.
Meanwhile, the debate over rBST continues to rage
inside and outside the industry. I don’t think the industry is ready
to add another front to its war of words over modern production
technologies.
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