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MILK

Arla recalls milk with traces of dish soap

Dairy producer Arla issued a warning Tuesday night that milk with traces of dish soap had been shipped from a facility in Gothenburg.

The dish soap remnants result nitrate levels in the milk of 500 milligrams per kilo, well over the 150 milligrams limit set by Sweden’s National Food Administration (Livsmedverket), according to Arla spokesperson Tobias Wåhlén.

Only very small quantities of the milk are believed to have been consumed.

“We’ve been able to trace nearly all of it to our warehouses and to our large customers. We have complete control over most of it,” Wåhlén told the TT news agency.

Around 300 containers of the tainted milk were sent to stores in western Sweden. The stores have been informed and the milk is to be removed from the shelves, but a few packages may have ended up in the hands of customers.

“It’s not a major health hazard. You hardly notice anything when you drink the milk. Nor does it lead to any discomfort. We’re recalling the milk because the product isn’t within the accepted [nitrate level] limits,” said Wåhlén.

The packages with high nitrate levels are 0.3 litre regular milk (3% milk fat) and 1.5 litre västkust (‘west coast’) regular milk, both with February 4th expiration dates.

CLIMATE

Danish company to scrap plastic caps from millions of organic milk cartons

Dairy giant Arla is to stop using plastic screw tops on its one-litre organic milk cartons.

Danish company to scrap plastic caps from millions of organic milk cartons
Photo: Andrew Kelly/Reuters/Ritzau Scanpix

The decision by the company is part of an effort to reduce CO2 emissions, it said in a statement.

Much of Arla’s packaging – including the one-litre organic milk cartons – is already produced from renewable materials such as plants and trees.

By dropping the plastic caps, the company says it can reduce the CO2 footprint of each carton by 30 percent.

Consumers buy 74 million cartons a year of the product from which the plastic packaging component is set to be removed. Each individual plastic cap is responsible for emissions of 10 grams of CO2, according to Arla.

As such the emissions saving on the caps could reach 740 tonnes of carbon dioxide annually. The figures are based on emissions measured during the period October 2019 to September 2020.

Arla has previously declared its ambition to achieve CO2-neutral operations by 2050.

READ ALSO: Danish dairy giant wants CO2-neutral milk production by 2050

“We and our farmers have an ambitious target of becoming CO2 neutral, and we are reducing are emissions on an ongoing basis,” Arla Denmark country director Helle Müller Petersen said in the statement.

“Part of that work is to reduce the CO2 emissions from our packaging, for example by reducing the use of plastic,” Petersen added.

“It’s therefore an active choice for us to remove the screw top from the organic milk,” she said.

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