Milk

Raw milk consumers oppose new dairy standards set to take effect next month in California that they say could outlaw some of their preferred products. The new law doesn't create an outright ban on raw milk but producers believe it could dry up supplies by setting new bacteria limits they say are difficult to meet. "There's quite a ruckus right now," said Mark McAfee, founder of Fresno-based Organic Pastures Dairy Co., the larger of two raw milk producers in California.

Parents selecting baby formula have their work cut out for them. Supermarkets contain shelves full of choices, with new ones seemingly coming all the time. There are formulas designed for babies with fussiness or gas, formulas made with organic ingredients, and formulas enriched with omega-3 fatty acids, suggested to enhance vision and brain development. Future formulas may contain the live bacteria found in yogurt.

ONE little milk study and everyone's having a cow. For decades, biochemists and physiologists in the dog-eat-dog world of sports drink technology have struggled to find the perfect elixir -- the right balance of carbohydrates, electrolytes, protein and fluid to keep athletes in peak form after various types of exercise.

This place has definitely got milk. It was named Cuenca Lechera, which translated means Dairy Valley, when it was founded 30 years ago as a government-subsidized farm to provide fresh milk for Mexico City. A community within the city of Tizayuca, it blossomed into a bovine Levittown with paved streets, basketball courts, stores, tidy homes and cows. Today, about 1,000 residents live alongside 26,000 black-and-white Holsteins, whose biological rhythms govern this tranquil community.

The cows on Pam and Jeff Riesgraf's farm chomped happily away on lush, green grass on a warm, sunny afternoon. Their milk would soon find its way to grocery stores, where organic dairy products are a hot item. The Riesgraf farm represents one vision for organic dairy -- small and medium-size family farms where the cows have names and spend the growing season on pasture.

Re: "Don't Mind the Lactose" [Sept. 11]: Perhaps the American Academy of Pediatrics should revisit Nutrition 101 and learn other ways to prevent osteoporosis without inflicting unnecessary discomfort upon our little ones. Eight ounces of calcium-fortified orange juice has more vitamin C than 8 ounces of milk. Tofu, nuts, grains, fortified cereals and numerous fruits and vegetables are packed with calcium. CHERYL ANNE YUHASZ \o7Santa Monica \f7 Where did this fallacy about a human need for the milk of other species to maintain health arise?

In the days and weeks of the great E. coli hunt of 2006, it was hard to find farmers more befuddled than the spinach farmers of central California. Their crop had sickened hundreds of people across the country--three were dead--and now they had come out of the fields to stand in the open, where no farmer wants to stand. They looked like victims of a hit and run. How the Escherichia coli bacteria known as O157:H7 had managed to strike their perfect rows of spinach they couldn't begin to explain.

A long-awaited study by federal scientists concludes that meat and milk from cloned animals and their offspring is safe to eat and should be allowed to enter the food supply without any special labeling. The finding is a strong signal that the Food and Drug Administration will endorse the use of cloning technology for cattle, goats and pigs when it publishes a key safety assessment intended to clear the way for formal approval of the products. That assessment is expected next week.

Scientists on Tuesday reported that perchlorate, a toxic component of rocket fuel, was contaminating virtually all samples of women's breast milk and its levels were found to be, on average, five times greater than in cow's milk. The contaminant, which originates mostly at defense industry plants, previously had been detected in various food and water supplies around the country.