Dairy firms come together to raise milk nutrition

At the first China Dairy Fresh Summit in Shanghai, Shanghai’s state-backed conglomerate Bright Dairy Food & Co has joined hands with fellow dairy companies to release new standards to assess the quality of pasteurized milk.

Bright Dairy also unveiled its upgraded fresh milk UBest, which contains higher levels of immunoglobulin, lactoferrin and lactoperoxidase.

Bright Dairy Chairman Pu Shaohua said that the company aims to provide high quality dairy products and to optimize five areas: sterilization, raw milk source, manufacturing facility, supply chain and quality management systems.

"Offering fresh milk with higher levels of nutritional content is a big trend for the dairy industry's revitalization and consumers' trading up for higher quality dairy products," he said.

Over recent years, Bright Dairy has also promoted an innovative sterilization process at its dairy factory which puts milk to 75 degrees Celcius for 15 seconds to kill pathogenic bacteria and to retain as much nutrients as possible.

New Hope Dairy Co, Changfu Dairy, Weigang Dairy, Yantang Dairy, Fengxing Milk Co, Zhongken Dairy Co and Beijing Sanyuan Foods are among the participants in jointly releasing the new fresh milk nutrition standards.

Chairman Wang Jiaqi of the Dairy Industry Commission under the National Agricultural Science & Technology Innovation Alliance noted that China's pasteurized fresh milk only accounts for 14 percent of the overall consumption of liquid dairy products, while in developed countries like Japan, the UK, the US and Australia, the figure is well above 90 percent.

Liu Yaqing, general secretary of the Dairy Association of China, said China will enhance the proportion of pasteurized milk and catch up with developed countries.

"Pasteurization is a more gentle way to kill harmful pathogenic bacteria and we need to revitalize the dairy industry and push forward structural supply-side reform by offering environmentally friendly and safe dairy products," Liu added.