Bottled milk 'use by' dates...

Danllan

Member
Location
Sir Gar / Carms
Things being a bit busy at the moment we've not been shopping at the usual time. I needed some milk this morning and opened a new four pint bottle of Calon Wen organic whole milk, dated for use by June 13th. It is perfect, it's been in a fairly cold fridge, but it's four days over and I can't detect any problem.

What do people who know about milk think is the real number of days you can keep milk for after the given 'use by' date?
 

Beowulf

Member
Location
Scotland
The performance of the refrigerator has a lot to do with it in my experience, by which I mean its ability to hold a constant temperature.

The two fridges in our kitchen are both fairly new, and very good at keeping fresh food well past the date stamps. The much older fridge/freezer I keep in the workshop is quite frankly past its best, with the temperature varying on a cycle by several degrees - that struggles to keep a pint of milk fresh for more than a day or two before it starts to smell a bit iffy.
 

neilo

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Montgomeryshire
When I was at college I used to have a small caravan fridge in my room (contrary to college regs of course), just big enough for alcohol and milk. When I took milk back from the bulk tank at home, it would last all week. If I hadn’t gone home and had to buy some pasteurised stuff from a shop, it would be going off after 3-4 days.

Incidentally, milk dipped at night from the college’s dairy would last all week too.....:whistle:
 

upnortheast

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Northumberland
TEMPERATURE, TEMPERATURE, TEMPERATURE
Why don`t domestic fridge makers put a temp display on their units.
Most people have no idea what their fridge runs at. Typical reply " The green light is on so its working "
Another typical reply " Well I put it back in the fridge every night ".
Milk should be stored at less than 4 degrees C & returned to the fridge straight away
Milk in our cold store is fine after 17 days 2 degrees
We date it 11 days after bottling

Got a snotty call from a shop one day." Your milk is going off before its date"
Was there within 30 minutes with our calibrated thermometer. Fridge was bunged up with dust 14 degrees FFS.
I could write a book ..............................
 

TheTallGuy

Member
Location
Cambridgeshire
Currently using milk dated 13/6 here. As above, keeping it at a low temperature (below 5 degrees) makes a big difference, as does the length of time the bottle is open - 4 pints only lasts a couple of days here so not normally a problem.
 

Dead Rabbits

Member
Location
'Merica
Realize that expiration dates are just made up. Usually someone at the manufacturer puts samples in a refrigerator and taste tests to see when it goes off then backs the date up a few days just to be safe.

Pasteurized milk sours but clean raw milk doesn’t interestingly, it clabbers. I’ve drank raw milk at two weeks and it was fine.

UHT milk is increasingly popular over here. Not sure how long that stuff will last, it’s shelf stable at room temperature...
 

Boohoo

Member
Location
Newtownabbey
As others have said it all depends on how it is stored, but the consumer can only do so much. If the retailer doesn't refrigerate it on delivery and doesn't rotate stock correctly the milk could be off before its use by date.
 
Location
southwest
There are no rules about Best Before or Use By dates on milk, it's entirely up to the processors. When I worked on the "dark side" of Dairying, we used to delivery into shops with 8 days life, but for Plymouth, 7 days was acceptable. In the run up to Christmas we used to "update" to avoid problems with "short dated" milk after the holiday. When we got a bit more professional, we did taste tests and up to 16 days after bottling was fine. But of course, this was with us controlling the "chill chain" It's not unknown for shops, including T***o to leave milk unrefridgerated in their yards, when they are busy. But of course they denied this ever happened-even when we showed them the pictures. Most consumer complaints about milk going off "in date" are related to poor refridgeration at home or "did the shopping, picked the kids up from school, visited granny for tea, took the shopping out of the car when we got home" situations.

IMO poor food hygiene at home poisons more people than any mass murderer.
 

SFI - What % were you taking out of production?

  • 0 %

    Votes: 80 42.3%
  • Up to 25%

    Votes: 66 34.9%
  • 25-50%

    Votes: 30 15.9%
  • 50-75%

    Votes: 3 1.6%
  • 75-100%

    Votes: 3 1.6%
  • 100% I’ve had enough of farming!

    Votes: 7 3.7%

Red Tractor drops launch of green farming scheme amid anger from farmers

  • 1,293
  • 1
As reported in Independent


quote: “Red Tractor has confirmed it is dropping plans to launch its green farming assurance standard in April“

read the TFF thread here: https://thefarmingforum.co.uk/index.php?threads/gfc-was-to-go-ahead-now-not-going-ahead.405234/
Top