Guess what the Food and Drug Administration is mulling over now? It’s all about ice cream and the regulations surrounding the manufacture of it. In addition to rules concerning pasteurization temperatures, artificial flavor levels and the amount of berry juice in sherbets; they are also contemplating the rules that would apply to utilizing milk from other animals in your ice cream.
What kind of animals, you ask? These would include animals such as: water buffalo, reindeer, yaks, sheep, goats and other exotic beasts that you and I would never relate to our bowl of hot fudge sundae. And who, pray tell, has come up with these new ideas? Well, that would be the International Ice Cream Association, which is composed of companies such as Dreyers, Dean Foods, Kroger, Kraft Foods, Hershey, Nestle and whole lot more of the big honkin’ Corporations.
“This is about making the process a lot more streamlined and efficient,” said Marci Cleary, a spokeswoman for the ice cream group. Her line of reasoning has some merit in regard to the way the rules are set up presently. As it stands now, you require a set of rules for goat ice cream, a separate set for yaks, a different set for sheep and so on and so forth. The rules that are being suggested would simply state, “exotic animal ice cream”.
What the censors and critics are concerned about is that the new rules may unbolt the door for ice cream manufacturers to begin using milk from other animals and concealing the fact in fine print on the package or maybe not telling you at all. In addition, there is the distinct possibility that it gives the ice cream makers the option of using cheap milk from overseas. India’s dairy industry, for instance, is over 90 percent water buffalo—just in case you were wondering. Water buffalo milk is going for about 12 cents a liter (45 cents a gallon) versus two to three dollars for cow’s milk (retail).
“This ice cream situation is one of the stupidest things I’ve ever seen,” said Pete Hardin, editor of The Milkweed, a trade publication for dairy farmers. “Imports from things like water buffalo in India raise sanitation issues and moral issues, like should we be taking food away from impoverished areas,” Hardin pointed out.
The ice cream manufacturers maintain that these worries are out of line and that any such use of exotic animal milk would have to be labeled. “We are not trying to change the quality of the ice cream,” said Marci Cleary.
The word is that the FDA has been engaging in this discussion for the last two years and they are probably not finished yet. In the interim, you have until December 27th to generate a comment or argument with the feds—if you are so inclined. As for me, I will ask Santa to keep a large stash of the real deal for me.