milk

The tip line has been running hot since the post earlier about Lucy Craymer and Charles Anderson running a hate campaign against the New Zealand agriculture sector.

Food Industry Asia has now sent a broadcast email with a link to my post slamming the irresponsible reporting by Lucy Craymer and the repeating by Fairfax’s Charles Anderson,

According to the latest media reports in China “the New Zealand ‘poisoning threat’ is threatening to jeopardize the Chinese New Year celebrations across Asia because of the potential contamination of thousands of tons of bakery products may be at risk”.

MPI issued a media release yesterday assuring all consumers that all New Zealand dairy products are safe even providing a Chinese translation.

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The Crafar Farms deal settled yesterday. Shanghai Pengxin issued the following statement:

Two years after it made a successful bid for the 16 North Island Crafar farms, Chinese company Shanghai Pengxin has withstood all legal challenges and finally been able to settle on the properties and take possession.

The properties, have been purchased in the name of a subsidiary company, Pengxin New Zealand Farm Group. They will be managed by a new joint venture company, Pengxin New Zealand Farm Management Ltd, a 50/50 joint venture with Government-owned Landcorp, which will be the managing partner, and which is increasing staff numbers to run the 16 farms.

The 13 dairy farms and three dry stock farms total almost 8,000 hectares and currently carry some 16,000 cows. The company is committed to investing $15.7 million in the next three years to upgrade the properties and increase milk production, which will initially be sold to Fonterra.

Great stuff, now we can get on with the other aspects of the deal opening up new access and markets in China.

Not even poor kids want to drink milk…yet Labour insists that we should be re-introducing this programme:

Free milk has left a sour taste in the mouths of some of Northland’s schools and a large numbers of their students have dropped out of the pilot programme which was launched on March 19.

After an enthusiastic take-up, some schools have seen nearly a 90 per cent decline in the number of kids receiving milk each day, with many blaming the taste of the ultra heat treated (UHT) milk.

“The kids wrote letters to Fonterra thanking them for the milk, but fewer were drinking it because of the taste it left in their mouth,” said Dave Bradley, Wellsford School principal.

The school said half the 240 children initially drinking the milk have opted out.

At Kaiwaka nearly 70 of the school’s 86 children were drinking the milk. It is now down to 10.

And just while I’m nursing an interest in these troughers and their ideas, all this talk against plain packaging from big tobacco reminded me that these troughers also want plain packaging on infant formula.

Seeing New Zealand’s biggest company Fonterra is proudly selling its Anmum product in countries like Malaysia, Philippines, Indonesia, China, Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Thailand and Vietnam earning NZ much needed export dollars, I thought I’d scare the horses by showing how their loopy ideas like plain packaging would look for infant formula.

These troughers don’t want anything on the product that seems or may send a positive message to mums. So those happy smiling mum/baby pics would be replaced with an image of a mother that looks depressed and all Aunty Mingy-like, a baby that looks unhappy, a big warning label (now required in the Philippines) and let’s not forget take away the colour is another seducing factor. Whammo

I’m no fan of Fonterra, but the problem I have is that large corporates sit there all high and mighty thinking that loopy ideas that impact on one industry won’t happen to them. Well plain packaging is stalking Fonterra now as it is stalking the booze companies. It is the thin end of a very large wedge.

Meanwhile the troughers who are bitterly against various causes, i.e. the troughers that think infant formula manufacturers are evil, keep pushing their ideas through their government providers. Before you know it, their ideas are written up in reports and presented to government as ideas that have the endorsement of “stakeholders”.

All this talk makes you wonder whether the Government has looked at its values recently…

Each day the tip-line runs hot with scurrilous tit-bits of the untoward. A lot comes out of Wellington, home of that pinko Farrar as well as busy-body bureaucrats determined to run a Sir Humphrey view of a clear conscience, plotting ways to push through their own pet projects.

As one of the largest bureaucracies in New Zealand, the Health Ministry is also one of the largest recipients of public money with Vote:Health receiving a solid whack of about $14b each Budget.

Recently the tip line has provided an insight into the nefarious activities of some of the groups literally sucking on the taxpayer’s tit. There’s a lot so I’ll do a series of posts on this.

Early last month breast feeding advocates converged on Wellington for a state funded hui or “stakeholder consultation” at the airport’s convention centre. As this involves some serial troughers I think some sunlight into this area is required.

On the basis that mothers should breast feed their babies if they can, the question is what happens if they can’t. And this is where it gets interesting.

As with most Ministry of Health funded cardigan wearing groupies, it seems the more extreme ideas the better. Pull together a group of breast feeding advocates (activists) and there’s little talk about actually helping mums with breast feeding, instead it’s about big business scaremongering.

The likes of Fonterra should be very worried.

These women’s groups are now calling for plain packaging of infant formula akin to Turia’s recent brain fart that’s bound to see NZ brought before the courts by those evil tobacco companies. They call for an infant formula tax to be placed on the manufacturers. They even suggest that infant formula should only be allowed on prescription from a GP like a heroin addict.

To top it off they even call for New Zealand not to sell infant formula to the world because it was “morally wrong” even though infant formula is sold at 10x the value of milk powder and is a big export earner (conveniently forgetting that export dollars are how mad huis like these can actually be held).

Basically they are trying to equate formula with addictive, carcinogenic poisons and drugs. It is shameful.

And to top it all off this ‘hui’, stakeholder consultation or whatever you want to call it, also had an earth mother ‘stunt feeder’ attend,  sitting there breast feeding her baby throughout the meeting without saying a word. I’m surprised the baby didn’t erupt with reflux having to sit through that bollocks.

This sort of nonsense by troughers literally shows how tits Wellington has become. More concerning is that the Minister responsible for all of this is Associate Minister Jo Goodhew.

I’m sure Ryall, English, Joyce and Key will be just tickled pink that a Minister is overseeing ideas that can damage one of New Zealand’s leading exporters.

How to make Vietnamese Coffee:

ᔥ The Atlantic

An interesting challenge for Fonterra…I wonder perhaps if they acknowledge this as their latest milk solids payout announcements start scaring the banks who have been lending money on 100% face value of Fonterra shares.

In 1942, when my father was born, the average dairy cow produced less than5,000 pounds of milk in its lifetime. Now, the average cow produces over 21,000 pounds of milk. At the same time, the number of dairy cows has decreased from a high of 25 million around the end of World War II to fewer than nine million today. This is an indisputable environmental win as fewer cows create less methane, a potent greenhouse gas, and require less land.

At the same time, it turns out that cow genomes are more complex than we thought: as milk production amps up, fertility drops. There’s an art to balancing all the traits that go into optimizing a herd.

Oh this is hilarious. Nosh are complaining because smart dairy owners are buying their below cost milk and then on-selling to at a profit…kind of like Trevor Mallard did with his tickets:

But not everyone who is buying the milk is drinking it.

“It’s an unfortunate incident that happens on a regular basis as far as trade coming in and purchasing the milk to on-sell,” says Mr Cibulskis.

3 News found one such example a few hundred metres up the road from Nosh.

Owners at a small store confirmed sending their children to Nosh to buy milk on numerous occasions.

The owner of the dairy did not want to appear on camera but says she bought the milk from Nosh because it was cheap and she could make a profit.

…But Jubeda Patel who owns a superette in Auckland’s CBD says milk pricing is the cause of this war between Nosh and the dairy up the road.

And she says Nosh is being a bit precious.

“I don’t think she’s doing anything wrong. She’s running a business which is hard for everyone. She’s paying the price that Nosh is asking. And Nosh may be closing earlier hours and she may be able to offer it at a different hour to them,” says Ms Patel.

Nosh has now told the owners of the dairy not to come back.

Nosh created the arbitrage, now they are upset about it. It shows basic economic illiteracy that they should be upset at people taking advantage of it.

I am heartily sick and tired of Simon Collins carping and whinging as he manufactures a crisis of poverty in New Zealand. Cactus Kate is likewise over it and she eviscerates the rubbish masquerading as a column at the NZ Herald.

Milk seems to be a big focus with one over-priced grocery store making a big play along with various left wing parties about how the poor simply can’t afford milk.

This is of course complete rubbish. I will show you how to save heaps on milk costs if you are poor.

Let’s accept for a moment the premise that:

“Milk is a basic commodity and should be made available to all New Zealand consumers, not just those who can afford it,”

Nosh thinks they are being big heroes by selling milk at $2 per bottle, notwithstanding that you have to buy $25.00 of their other over-priced grocery items in order to qualify. We can ignore Nosh as they are simply grandstanding and their price is unsustainable, however I am going to show you how to save heaps on your milk costs.

It is actually simple. Milk Powder. Anchor conveniently explains the nutritional value of milk powder for you in comparison to fresh milk:

Milk Powder is the same…identical…a facsimile of fresh milk. Just add water, voila. Even better 1 kilo of milk powder makes up 8 litres of milk.

So how much is 1 kilo of milk powder?

Well that varies but for the Anchor product it is $14.99 a kilo or $1.87 per litre of nutritionally the same milk. Nosh milk at the moment is amrginally cheaper…remember they are selling at a loss and are unable to sustain that price, the supermarket is making a profit and there is so much milk powder available that store are forced to sell it.

But I can do better….if you buy Home Brand milk powder it is only 9.99 per kilo or just $1.24 per litre of milk. plus you don;t have to buy $25.00 worth of over-priced Nosh groceries to qualify. The milk powder will have been made in the same factory as the Anchor Brand more likely than not, so there is bugger all difference.

Using Whales Budget Tips for the Poor you can save plenty on milk,  you don’t have to drive miles to the upmarket and expensive Nosh stores and at supermarkets you can buy just one bag of milk powder which will provide you with 8 litres of relatively cheap and nutritionally identical milk.

Following my budget tips, for just $9.99 you can have 8 litres of milk.

Inspiration from Oswald

That was then when milk was evil:

Kiwis would be far healthier if they made the easy switch from full-fat to trim milk, reports Emily Watt from Sunday Star Times.

Orange, yellow, blue and green – it’s a rainbow of colours in the milk aisle at the supermarket, but most New Zealanders are sticking with fat-filled blue.

Kiwis bought nearly 100 million litres of blue-top milk last year, despite nationwide health messages to cut down on saturated fat. Nutritionists say if that was trim milk, our rates of high cholesterol, blood pressure and cardiovascular disease would improve dramatically.

A litre of blue-top milk contains 24g of saturated fat, equivalent to four nougat-filled chocolate bars.

The nation’s milk-drinking habits need to change, says Otago University professor of nutrition Jim Mann. “That’s a significant way people could cut down on saturated fat intake. It’s potentially very important. And it’s an easy thing to do.”

This is now, Milk is a basic commodity and should be made available to ALL:

“Milk is a basic commodity and should be made available to all New Zealand consumers, not just those who can afford it,” Nosh director Clinton Beuvink said.

Of course Nosh neglected to tell everyone that they had to spend a minimum $25.00 on other goods in their over-priced store to avail themselves of the cheap milk deal.