Milk

More and more consumers are forgoing standard milk in favor of "raw" milk, milk that's unpasteurized and unhomogenized, essentially straight from the udder of the cow. Some seek out raw milk for its reportedly creamier, richer taste, but more choose it because they believe it's more healthful, a "living" food that can help fend off many illnesses, as varied as allergies and cancer.

The California Milk Advisory Board continues to ply its "Happy Cows" advertising campaign, but there are few happy dairy farmers right now. Frustrated with low milk prices, dairy farmers are selling cows for hamburger meat and threatening to dump milk into sewers. Many are burning through their life savings hoping to survive the slump, and others are exiting the business. Two farmers have killed themselves. The pain is being felt throughout the U.S.

They have four legs, fuzzy faces and udders full of milk. To the uninitiated, they look like dairy goats. To GTC Biotherapeutics Inc., they're cutting-edge drug-making machines. The goats being raised on a farm in central Massachusetts are genetically engineered to make a human protein in their milk that prevents dangerous blood clots from forming. The company extracts the protein and turns it into a medicine that fights strokes, pulmonary embolisms and other life-threatening conditions.

Chinese authorities arrested 12 more people in connection with tainted baby formula, said Shi Guizhong, spokesman for the Hebei provincial police. The official said that brought the number detained to 18. Police also confiscated nearly 500 pounds of melamine, the chemical that was added to milk powder, igniting a widening food safety crisis. Health Minister Chen Zhu said he expected the number of affected babies to increase as "more and more parents take kids to the hospital." Three infants have died and more than 6,200 have fallen ill.

How quickly things can change. Exactly one month ago, China was staging the closing ceremony of the Olympics, basking in a haul of gold medals and wide praise for nearly perfect management of the Summer Games. Today it is struggling with another crisis in a year that, aside from two weeks in August, has been filled with scandal, natural disasters and ethnic troubles.

Even after regulators assured the public that all contaminated baby formula was off the shelves, B.X. Wei wasn't going to feed his 2-month-old son anything that came out of a can. Especially not one made in China. But his wife didn't have enough breast milk for the baby. Then the 30-year-old businessman from Jiangsu province remembered that during his childhood, women would nurse each other's babies if one ran out of milk.

Have you checked out the price of milk lately? Be prepared to be confused, baffled and amazed. What people pay for milk in California is based upon a complex combination of state regulations and retailing strategy. The state determines the minimum price that milk processors -- the companies that bottle milk or turn it into cheese and ice cream -- must pay farmers. The price fluctuates monthly based upon what butter, cheese and powdered milk sell for on commodity exchanges.

On holiday with my family this week on China's resort island of Hainan, one of the first things I did after checking in to our hotel room was ask the duty manager: What kind of milk do you serve? A few minutes later, a man named Jimmy from the hotel's food-service staff called. Don't worry, he said, the hotel serves only fresh milk. "We carefully check our supplier," he said. It may seem odd to be obsessing over dairy products, but that's now common for my family and many others living in China.

Before dawn each day, Gao Penghong and his wife join scores of other farmers in this dairy-rich village who must walk their cows to a local milk collection station because of new safety requirements. A byproduct of China's deadly tainted-milk scandal, the mile-long walks to the station come as officials push for more critical supervision of dairy farmers. Only weeks ago, farmers were free to milk their cows at home and deliver the product in heavy metal containers.

Five years ago, dairy farmer Leroy Shatto was struggling to stay in business. Today, his herd has more than doubled amid a surge in demand for his product. The difference: a marketing campaign touting Shatto milk as free of artificial hormones. Osborn, Mo.-based Shatto milk comes plain or flavored, but all comes from cows free of the genetically engineered hormone supplements that many conventional dairies give cows to boost their milk production.