Know your Plastics

Your raw milk is safe in plastic containers

Organic Pastures Dairy has performed extensive research on the subject of plastics and plastic containers for raw milk. According to the Natural Home Garden Magazine (May/June 2003) and Consumer Reports, # 2 plastic HDPE does not leach, unless it is heated, burned, or microwaved. Other plastics, including #3, #6, and #7, do have a reputation for leaching elements into food, especially when heated.

Organic Pastures sources specially produced #2 plastic bottles that have never been heat treated (sent through a heat or flame tunnel). Heat tunnel treatment or flaming is performed on many plastic containers in order to open the carbon bonds and permit the label glue to attach more effectively. The containers made especially for OPDC are never heat treated, and actually repel water. This is a simple test you can perform yourself.

Many consumers have made a quantum leap in belief and distrust all plastics. A more common sense approach requires looking at all of the information. Just because one family of plastics is associated with leaching when heated, it does not mean that all plastics behave the same way. The OPDC #2 HPDE does not leach unless it is microwaved or burned. All our of milk products are kept cold, which requires the container to be kept cold also. We do encourage all plastics to be recycled at your local community recycling center.

OPDC will continue producing limited amounts of raw milk in glass containers for those consumers who prefer glass. Glass washing and glass purchase has become massively expensive. To continue high volume use of glass, the State would require us to install a commercial glass washer costing more than $1 million dollars. If we were to install this expensive washing equipment, the waste water management dictates a small lagoon. This could unleash waste water and cleaning chemicals on our beautiful green pasture environment. It just does not meet our concept of green and clean.

Recently, the dairy has been over run by families requesting larger plastic (non-leaching) containers. OPDC has shipped all our raw colostrum and butter in #2 plastic containers for the last three years without one complaint or problem.

We appreciate any concerns you may have, but please believe us that we have done our homework and we are protecting our precious raw milk with the best container we can find.

If someone has found different research or information, please send it to us at the address located on our contact us page.



Read what Care2 Connect says about safe plastics: Which Plastics Are Safe for Lunchbox Use?

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