Chocolate-milk connoisseurs dedicated to the Boice Brothers Milk House on O’Neil Street in midtown Kingston have become unsettled by a packaging change. So say some locals.
The minimalist diamond-shaped Boice Bros. logo, est. 1914, has been replaced by a cow in the foreground of a field gazing out at the milk drinker, below a circular green Hudson Valley Fresh label.
With chocolate-milk sales slowing, Boice Brothers last week issued a statement to reassure customers. “The label and branding is different,” it said, “but it’s the same great milk we’ve been offering for over 100 years!!”
Which is not entirely accurate. For the last 14 years, the milk coming out of the dairy processing plant right across the street has been provided from one supplier with a vision of what milk should be and cognizant of the difficulties facing the enterprise providing it.
“Milk as a commodity is determined by a truckload of cheese in Chicago on a commodity exchange and goes by bidding,” explains Dr. Sam Simon, managing director of the dairy farm co-operative Hudson Valley Fresh. “Land O Lakes and the big boys decide how much that cheese is worth. And they extrapolate from that what is the value of the milk. It’s supply and demand, and it’s a world market. If you’ve been in this area a long time, you’ve seen the dairy farms disappear. And the reason they disappeared is that expenses exceed revenue.”
Simon uses the cost of doing business today as an example.
“It costs a farm a minimum of 25 cents a pound to produce milk,” he says. “But they’re receiving 19 cents a pound from the commodity. That’s a six- cent deficit. And if you produce a million pounds of milk a month — and that’s a small farm milking 40 cows — you just lost $60,000 without doing anything. Now how long can that be withstood?”
To make the nut, some dairy farms diversify by selling other products like corn, hay, or soybean to help sustain the farm. Milk alone is not sustainable.
Simon’s solution was a form of collectivization.
“We’re a Limited Liability Cooperative,” says Simon. “Everybody’s an equal member, no matter how big the farm is. Each farmer contributed an equal amount into the initiation of this project. And so the result is when it’s successful they share equally in the success. Or if it fails, they share equally in that failure.”
The operation has grown from three dairy farms to eight, four in Columbia County and four in Dutchess.
“Twenty years ago, I started this project because I had a dairy myself and was raised on a farm. And I knew what the plight was,” says Simon. “We started small. We paid [Boice Bros.] to process Hudson Valley Fresh milk.”
While some milk-processing plants commingle different milks from different farms, Simon says their co-op’s was from day one the only milk going into that plant.
Four years ago, Hudson Valley Fresh took over the means of production at the plant. It bought the processing plant itself.
Simon explained: “I said, if you’re going to deliver a quality product and you have control of milk at the farm, and have control as it gets to the plant, and you process and sell it without an intermediary, then you can demand the price that it costs to produce and then process and deliver the milk.”
The quality of milk, asserts Simon, is the collective’s calling card in two distinctive ways. The milk processed in the plant is not ultra-pasteurized, and the milk boasts low cell and bacteria counts.
Ultra-pasteurized refers to the process of cooking the milk to 260 or 280 degrees over a short period of time. “What happens at 280? You break down the enzymes, lipase and protease,” says Simon. “If you eliminate them, the milk has a shelf life for three, four months. But guess what? You’re also changing the natural proteins of the milk. It’s white, but it’s not the same. It doesn’t taste the same. It doesn’t cook the same. It doesn’t make the same kind of heavy cream. It doesn’t work with what chefs are working with. But it has a long shelf life, and people don’t want to be bothered with an 18-day shelf life. Well, it’s a perishable product. It’s reality. It’s milk!”
The importance of a low cell count has everything to do with the health of the cow’s udder. An inflammation of the udder, known as bovine mastisis, is caused by infection. And milk from an infected cow shows higher levels of bacteria and white blood cells. Industry-standard upper limits have been placed on both. White blood cells cannot be present in the milk in amounts of 750,000/mL or higher.
“That’s a reflection of the health of a cow,” says Simon. “Premium milk is less than 200,000. The milk going in that plant is less than 150. Actually, it was around 100 when the average milk or organic or generic runs over 300,000. And that’s bad. When you get up to 700,000 or 800,000, that’s pus.”
Simon says the prevention of sickness is the primary philosophy practiced by the collective. Hudson Valley Fresh avoids the rote use of antibiotics. Milk from sick cows is thrown out.
“Every day, seven days a week, in the big farms, 300, 400 cows, they’re constantly walking around,” explains Simon. “They get corralled twice a day to be milked. Some milk farms milk three times a day. And that’s even healthier because you’re just taking the pressure off the udder. The udder is what gets exposed to the manure and the dirt. So if you minimize that where they’re going to lie down, then the udder stays healthy. The white count stays low. The cows live longer. You get a better product. Clean, happy cows make good milk. How about that?”
Time will tell whether chocolate-milk drinkers who remain nostalgic for the old design on the milk carton will embrace the new branding. Should they know the milk still gets processed in Kingston and brought across the street fresh, the appreciation for the taste might linger longer.
Why does the Boice Dairy name remain if it’s not on the milk carton? “We want to preserve the fine name of the Boices,” replies Simon, “a beautiful family for 100 years.”
Hudson Valley Fresh provides milk to Bard, Vassar, Marist, The CIA, West Point and numerous public schools, including every one in the Kingston school district.
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