Dairy products 9781422227411, 1422227413, 9781422227435, 142222743X, 9781422290750, 1422290751

Table of contents :
Title Page
Contents
Chapter 1: Where Do Dairy Products Come From?
Chapter 2: The History of Dairy Products
Chapter 3: Who Makes the Dairy Products We Eat?
Chapter 4: How Are Dairy Products Made?
Chapter 5: How Do Dairy Products Get to Your Plate?
Words to Know
Find Out More
Index
About the Author & Picture Credits
Blank Page

Citation preview

NHMC13_8HBK_FeedngWorld_NHMC13_8HBK_FeedngWorld 4/27/13 2:05 PM Page 7

Most of us have a lot of reasons to say thank you to cows! Every time we drink a glass of milk, spread butter on our toast, or lick an ice cream cone, we’re eating dairy products—foods that come from cows’ milk. Find out how farmers get milk, what factories do to make dairy products, and how these foods reach your refrigerator. Discover the story of your food—where it was grown, who grows it, and how it gets to your plate.

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ISBN 978-1-4222-2743-5

EAN

90000

9 781422 227435 Cover images: Shutterstock.com

Feeding the World

Dairy Products

Feeding the World Corn Dairy Products Eggs Farmed Fish Meat rice soybeans wheat

Feeding the World

Dairy Products Kim Etingoff

Mason Crest

Mason Crest 450 Parkway Drive, Suite D Broomall, PA  19008 www.masoncrest.com

Copyright © 2014 by Mason Crest, an imprint of National Highlights, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission from the publisher. Printed and bound in the United States of America. First printing 987654321 Series ISBN: 978-1-4222-2741-1 ISBN: 978-1-4222-2743-5 ebook ISBN: 978-1-4222-9075-0 The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcopy format(s) as follows: Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Etingoff, Kim. Dairy products / Kim Etingoff. p. cm. — (Feeding the world) ISBN 978-1-4222-2743-5 (hardcover) — ISBN 978-1-4222-2741-1(series) — ISBN 978-1-4222-9075-0 (ebook) 1. Dairy products—Juvenile literature. 2. Food supply—Juvenile literature. I. Title. II. Series: Feeding the world. TX377.E85 2014 641.3’7—dc23 2013004737 Publisher’s notes: The websites mentioned in this book were active at the time of publication. The publisher is not responsible for websites that have changed their addresses or discontinued operation since the date of publication. The publisher will review and update the website addresses each time the book is reprinted.

Contents 1. Where Do Dairy Products Come From? 7 2. The History of Dairy Products 13 3. Who Makes the Dairy Products We Eat? 23 4. How Are Dairy Products Made? 31 5. How Do Dairy Products Get to Your Plate? 41 Words to Know 45 Find Out More 46 Index 47 About the Author & Picture Credits 48

Chapter One

Where Do Dairy Products Come From?

W

hat’s the last thing you ate? Maybe it was cereal for breakfast. It might have been an orange for a snack. Maybe you had noodles for lunch. Where did your food come from? The refrigerator? Your school? The grocery store? That’s true, but it’s not the whole story. All the food you eat has a longer story. It didn’t just magically appear in packages on your shelf or in the school lunch line. Somebody had to make or grow it!

A Long Trip A lot of hard work goes into making the food we all eat. Many people work hard to get food to your plate. Every ingredient comes from the earth in one way or another. Fruits and vegetables grow in the ground. So do grains like rice and wheat.

All the food we get at the grocery store has a long story about how it got from a farm or factory to your plate. Your food didn’t start out at the supermarket!

Meat comes from animals that have eaten things that grow in the ground. Chickens, goats, cows, pigs, and other animals eat grass and grains. After that, we eat the animals. Even things like cookies come from the ground! Cookies don’t grow on trees, of course. But think about what goes into making a cookie. Cookies are made with flour, which comes from wheat. They are made with sugar, which comes from a plant called sugarcane. Eggs from chickens go into cookies. Almost all of the ingredients in cookies come from the ground in one way or another. Some people grow their own food. Then they know just where it’s coming from. But no one can grow everything they eat. We all have to depend on other people for at least some of our food. Farmers around the world grow our food. They grow bananas, carrots, lettuce, and more. They raise the cows that give us meat and milk. All that food has to get to the grocery stores. Some makes its way to a factory first. Then it gets made into foods like jelly, crackers, and juice.

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All dairy products are made from animal milk. Most of these foods are made using cow’s milk. People also make cheese and yogurt with goat’s milk, sheep’s milk, and horse’s milk.

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The milk that you use in your morning cereal might have traveled many miles to be part of your breakfast!

So the next time you sit down to eat, try to guess where that food comes from. Where was it grown? How did it get to you? Who made it?

The Story of Dairy Many people drink a glass of milk each day. They might enjoy some ice cream as a treat. But we probably don’t stop and think where that milk or ice cream came from. Milk and yogurt are both dairy products . Dairy products are foods that come from animal milk. Cheese is a dairy product. So is butter. Yogurt is a dairy product. Don’t forget ice cream! Each one of these foods comes from animal milk. Dairy products can come from any animal’s milk. People mostly use milk from cows, goats, and sheep. Some people also use milk from yaks, camels, and water buffaloes. Most of us don’t have a cow or a goat in the back yard. We have to buy our dairy. We go to the grocery store and pick up milk, yogurt, cheese, and butter. Or we go out for some ice cream once in a while.

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Before you ate that ice cream, it used to be milk. The milk was processed at a factory. But before that, it came right from a cow. From a cow or goat to a factory to your house, each dairy product has a story.

Grow Your Own If you are really curious about where food comes from, grow some yourself! It’s pretty easy to grow a garden full of veggies. If you don’t have a yard, you can plant vegetables in pots too. Just get some seeds and plant them in dirt. Make sure your seeds get plenty of sun and water, and then see what happens. Choose vegetables you know you already like. Or choose some you haven’t tried before. Watch as your seeds grow into tomatoes, beans, lettuce, and more.

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C h a p t e r Tw o

P

The History of Dairy Products

eople have been eating and drinking dairy products for a long time. Hundreds of years ago, people ate some of the same kinds of cheese you eat today. But the way we make dairy products has changed a lot.

The First Milk Drinkers For a long time, humans couldn’t actually drink animal milk. People got sick if they tried. Their bodies just wouldn’t let them. Then something changed. Scientists think that people first started to drink milk in Central Europe. Their bodies changed so that they didn’t get sick. That was 7,500 years ago. At that time, there was a small group of people who could drink milk. But most people still couldn’t.

During cheese making, milk is split up into two parts. This is the whey, a watery liquid.

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Some people from the milk-drinking group traveled around. As they moved, they brought milk drinking with them. When they had kids, their kids could drink milk too. Drinking milk was good for the people who could do it. It helped people stay healthy. After a while, lots of people in Europe could drink milk. So could people in the Middle East. Drinking milk spread quickly. In other places, though, people didn’t drink milk.

Ancient Cows Cows haven’t been around forever in the way we know them today. Their ancestors were the aurochs. Aurochs were like very big cows, but they weren’t exactly the same. They lived in the wild. People couldn’t just go out and milk them. They did hunt aurochs for meat, though. Thousands of years ago, people got the idea to domesticate them. That means that people tamed aurochs and made them live near humans. They became farm animals. Then people could keep them in pens. They could milk them and kill them for meat.

The First Dairy Products No one knows exactly how people first started making things like cheese and yogurt. We do have a good story, though. A man on horseback was traveling a long way. He brought some milk with him in case he got thirsty. He kept it in a bag that was made from an animal stomach. The stomach had something called rennet in it. During the man’s trip, the horse bounced up and down. The bouncing mixed the rennet with the milk. It was also hot out. The sun made the milk hot. When the man stopped to take a drink, he found something strange. He didn’t have milk anymore! He had a watery liquid and some chunky, white stuff. Because he was hungry and thirsty, he decided to try it. It turned out that it was good. The man had made the first cheese.

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Curds are what’s left when whey is taken out of milk that is being turned into cheese. Curds are then used to make the kind of cheese you buy in a grocery store.

Other Kinds of Dairy There are tons of different dairy products out there. Milk, yogurt, cheese, butter, and ice cream are just some of the more common ones. There’s also clotted cream, which comes from heating up milk. There’s kumis, milk from horses that is popular in Central Asia. Cottage cheese, buttermilk, and dried milk are all dairy products too.

Today, we make cheese in pretty much the same way. We don’t use animal stomachs. But we do use rennet, which comes from animal stomachs. We mix up milk and rennet and heat it up. The milk becomes two things. First, we get a watery liquid called whey. We also get the chunky, white stuff, called curds. Then curds are made into cheese.

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This is a yogurt drink from Turkey called ayran. In Turkey, there are many kinds of foods that are made with yogurt. Even the word “yogurt” comes from Turkey!

More People Eat Dairy Cheese, yogurt, and butter didn’t stay in one place for long. The people who first made dairy products told other people. People started making dairy products all over the Middle East and Europe. Different dairy products became important to different people. The Romans made a lot of cheese. In Turkey, people loved yogurt. Dairy products were more popular where it was colder. It’s hard to store milk and cheese when it’s hot out. They go bad quickly. So it makes sense that it was easier to keep dairy fresh in colder places. Dairy became a big part of people’s diets in Northern Europe. In places like England, dairy was a good way for people to get a lot of protein to help them stay healthy. Dairy was less important in warmer places. Around the Mediterranean, people ate less dairy. They ate more oil instead.

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Refrigerators changed the world! They let us keep our food nice and cold so that it lasted longer. Today, trucks carry food across many miles inside large refrigerators, and you keep your food in a refrigerator in your home.

Later on, people from Europe started moving to other parts of the world. They brought animals with them. They also brought milk drinking with them. Explorers started coming to the Americas. No one used dairy products there. Native peoples didn’t raise animals for milk. Their bodies wouldn’t let them drink it. But the explorers brought cows, goats, and sheep for milk and meat. Over time, more and more Europeans moved to the Americas. Milk and cheese became a normal part of the food people ate there. People all over the world were eating and drinking dairy products. Not everyone was drinking milk or eating cheese, though. There were still plenty of people who couldn’t. Today, there are still people whose bodies won’t let them drink milk.

Milk Today Milk always went bad quickly. People had to drink it fast before it went bad. That’s one reason why making cheese and yogurt from milk was popular. That way, people could make milk last longer. They could keep milk for a day. People could keep cheese for weeks or even years.

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When refrigerators were first invented, they were more like closets or chests of drawers than the refrigerators we have today. Old refrigerators held ice inside to keep food cool.

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Louis Pasteur was the first person to come up with the idea of heating up liquid to kill germs in it. Today, almost all milk goes through pasteurization.

Eating dairy products changed a lot when refrigerators were invented. Refrigerators were invented in the middle of the 1800s. They changed a lot of things, including what people ate. Families could keep fresh food in their refrigerators at home. Their dairy products didn’t go bad as often. People could keep them cold, which kept them from going bad. Before refrigerators, people couldn’t move dairy products very far. They would go bad too quickly. People had to depend on their local farmers for milk and other dairy products. Some families bought milk every day. Then they drank it before it went bad. Many people had their own dairy animals. That way, they could milk the animals and drink the milk right on their own farm. With refrigerators, dairy companies could send milk and other dairy products farther. Farmers in the country could send their milk into the city. They could sell their products to more people.

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People didn’t have to have their own animals anymore. That’s how it still works today. Another big change was pasteurization. Pasteurization is a way of heating up milk to kill bacteria in it. For a while, lots of people were getting sick from drinking milk. Many babies were getting sick. There was too much bacteria in the milk. That’s because the cows the milk came from weren’t healthy. Sometimes the farms they lived on made them sick. A French scientist named Louis Pasteur did some experiments on wine. He found that heating it up killed bacteria in the wine. Now we call the way we heat something to kill the bacteria pasteurization (named after Louis Pasteur). People thought that this was a good thing for milk, too. They tried heating up milk to kill the bacteria that were making people sick. It worked! After that, people made laws that said all milk had to be pasteurized. Many countries still have these laws saying all milk and milk products have to be pasteurized. Today, most milk is pasteurized. And we buy it from the grocery store. Modern inventions have a lot to do with how we eat dairy products today.

Raw Milk Lots of people think that pasteurizing milk is a good idea. It kills bacteria and keeps people healthy. But others think that pasteurization isn’t so good. They want to drink raw milk. Raw milk hasn’t been pasteurized. People who support drinking raw milk think that it has more vitamins and minerals in it. They also say it tastes better. They think it’s up to people to choose whether or not they drink raw milk. Some countries allow people to drink raw milk, like France. Some countries have laws against it, like the United States and Australia.

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Chapter Three

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Who Makes the Dairy Products We Eat?

ou probably don’t know the people who make the dairy products you eat. They may be hundreds or thousands of miles away. But they’re all important in getting food to your plate!

The Farmers Farmers are in charge of raising animals. They could be taking care of cows, goats, sheep, or any other animal that gives us milk. They have to make sure the animals get enough food. They have to milk them every day. They have to keep their animals healthy. Farmers also have to figure out the best way to sell their milk. They need to make money with their farms. So they figure out which dairy companies will give them the most money.

Many farmers use machines to help them milk their cows. This cow has a milking machine attached to its udders. The milk travels through tubes and into the container on the right.

On big farms, farmers have a lot of help. The farmer’s family might help out. He could hire people to work for him. If there are hundreds of cows on one farm, one farmer can’t do all the work by himself. On some farms, the farmers make dairy products too. They use their milk to make cheese, yogurt, or butter. Dairy farmers live all over the world. Farmers in different parts of the world have very different lives. In India, some dairy farmers have just one or two buffalo to produce milk. The farmer milks the buffalo by hand every day and brings half the milk home to drink. A milkman picks up the rest of the milk. He brings it into town to a store. Other people come and buy milk. A farmer in India probably doesn’t send his milk out of the country. Only people close by drink the milk from his farm. In New Zealand, dairy farmers have a lot more animals. One dairy farmer might have 300 cows. She can’t drink all that milk herself! She raises all those cows on big fields. The farmer uses machines to milk her cows. There are too many cows for her to milk by herself.

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If a farmer doesn’t have many cows, he might milk them by hand. To milk a cow by hand, a farmer has to squeeze the cow’s udders like you see here.

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A truck comes to pick up the milk and brings it to a factory. It’s processed and put into packages there. Most of the milk in New Zealand is sent to other countries.

Organic Milk Have you ever had organic milk? Organic milk is made without certain things, like chemicals. Most farmers that raise cows feed them certain chemicals to make cows grow faster. They also give them food that has been grown with chemical fertilizers (to help things grow by making the dirt healthy) and pesticides (to kill bugs that might eat a farmer’s plants). But not all farmers want to use those things. Chemicals can get into the water and poison animals and other creatures (including people). Pesticides kill all bugs, even though some bugs are good for the farm, like bees and spiders. Farmers who don’t want to use chemicals choose to grow organically. They don’t use chemical pesticides and fertilizers that could hurt the environment. They let cows grow naturally. Organic farmers work with nature to grow food. Organic farms are found all over the world. They are often smaller than non-organic farms, but that isn’t always true. Organic farming is becoming more popular. There are organic vegetables, fruit, grains, meat, and more. Maybe you’ve eaten some organic food from the grocery store or the farmers’ market. Organic food has a label that says it’s organic. Take a look the next time you’re at the store.

The factory Factories are where most of our dairy products are made. Milk gets turned into other things like ice cream at factories. Scientists have to come up with the best ways of making dairy products. At what temperature should milk be heated to in order to make yogurt? How do we make sure there are no bacteria in butter? What is the best way to package milk? Scientists can give us the answers.

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Cheese is made using large machines inside factories. People don’t make cheese in animal stomachs anymore, but we still use rennet. We still split the curds and the whey. Today, we do almost all of that work with machines.

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All the people who work in factories make dairy products too. Lots of people have to take care of the machines. They have to take the milk that comes from farms and bring it to the right part of the factory. They have to test the dairy products to see if they’re safe to eat.

All the milk in the supermarket has been through a long trip from the farm to the store shelf. And your house is the last stop on that long trip.

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The Store We can’t forget the place where you actually buy dairy products. Grocery stores need a lot of people to keep them running. Workers unload food from trucks. They put them on the shelves. They take the money you use to pay for food. And then the customer —you!—can take your milk or cheese home and enjoy it.

Where Are Dairy Products Made? Dairy products are made in many parts of the world. Some places make a whole lot more than others, though. The biggest maker of milk in the world is the European Union (EU). The EU is a group of countries in Europe. EU countries like Germany make a lot of milk. Lots and lots of farmers in the EU raise animals for milk. All together, the countries of the EU make more milk than anywhere else in the world. The EU also makes the most cheese. There are 24 million cows in the EU. Farmers raising all those cows help to make milk and cheese. The United States also makes a lot of milk. So do India, China, and Russia. India makes the most butter. People in countries that make dairy products also eat and drink a lot of them. For example, India drinks the most milk of any country. It also has the most cows. You’re a lot more likely to find dairy farmers in the countries that eat and drink a lot of dairy products. You’ll also find more factories that make these foods. All around the world, people are making and eating or drinking dairy products!

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C h a p t e r F OUR

N

How Are Dairy Products Made?

ot all dairy products are the same. Milk has to go through different steps to get to your refrigerator than yogurt does. Cheese is made in a different way than butter or ice cream. The one thing they all have in common, though, is that they come from animal milk.

Milk You might think that plain old milk just comes from a cow or other animal and goes right to the store. There are actually a few steps in between. Let’s say we’re following some cow milk. Farmers have to milk their cows twice a day, usually. Cows produce a lot of milk! If you don’t milk them, the milk hurts the cows. Farmers with just a few cows might milk them by hand. But most farmers have machines that help them with milking.

Milk farms line the cows up in rows just like the cows in this picture so that the farmers can milk many cows at one time.

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Many big farms have too many cows for a farmer to milk them all by hand. Instead, farmers use machines like these to milk the cows.

The cows line up outside the barn with the machines. They go through the barn a few at a time, and are put into stalls. Then people attach the milking machines to their udders . The machines pull on the cow’s udder to get the milk. Then the milk flows into milk tanks. The tanks are kept cold so the milk stays fresh. Later that day, a milk truck comes by the farm. Milk trucks are like huge tanks. The truck driver takes all the milk at the farm and pours it into the truck. The truck is kept cold too. The truck brings the milk to a factory. In the factory, the milk gets cleaned and processed. First, it’s strained. Then it’s spun around really fast. The spinning pulls cream from the rest of the milk. (Milk right from a cow has cream in it.) It also makes it into low-fat, reduced fat, or whole milk. Most milk has some fat in it. But you can choose to buy milk with a lot of fat in it (whole) or with very little fat in it (skim or low-fat milk). Next, the factory adds vitamins. That way, you get more vitamins A and D whenever you drink milk. Pasteurization is next. The milk has to be heated to a high temperature for a short time. Pasteurization kills any bacteria still in the milk. Finally, the milk is homogenized. That means it is mixed up. There are tiny globs of fat in the milk. Homogenization mixes the fat evenly into the rest of the milk. Think of shaking up a jar of

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water with some salt in it. At first, you can see the salt crystals. After you shake it, the salt has mixed into the water. Homogenization is a little like that. Now the milk is ready to be put in packages. Factories put milk in cartons, plastic jugs, bottles, or bags. It’s ready for its trip to you.

Cheese Cheese comes from milk. There are all sorts of cheese. Each cheese is made in a different way. But all cheese is made with a few basic steps. First, rennet is added to the milk. Remember that rennet comes from animal stomachs. There is also vegetable-based rennet. Sometimes good bacteria is added to the milk too. It depends on the kind of cheese. The rennet pulls apart the curds and the whey. The curd is the part that becomes cheese. The cheese is really watery at this point. Some of that liquid has to come out. The curd is heated. It’s stirred. It’s drained. It’s pressed. All of that removes lots of the water. Hard cheeses have less water. They take longer to make. Some cheese has flavoring in it. Salt, herbs, and other things are often added to the cheese. Then it’s formed into blocks or put into packages.

Making Cheese Yourself You can make your own cheese. It’s easy! (But get an adult’s permission first.) Get some milk. Whole milk is the best, but any milk will do. Heat the milk up to 195 degrees F (90 degrees C). Keep stirring all the time when it gets pretty warm. Use a thermometer. If you don’t have a thermometer, you can tell the milk is hot enough just by looking. The milk will steam a little, and will be foamy around the edge. Then add in a little bit of vinegar or lemon juice. The vinegar acts like the rennet. The milk will turn into curds and whey. If it doesn’t, keep heating and stirring—the milk might not be hot enough. Turn the heat off and let it cool down. Then strain the mixture into a strong paper towel. Squeeze out the extra liquid. Add salt or herbs. Then enjoy warm or cold! You’ve just made simple fresh cheese.

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Many cheeses have to be kept in warehouses before going to the store. The cheese has to have time to get older. These kinds of cheese taste better the longer they’ve spent aging.

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Soft cheese is ready to go right to the store. Hard cheeses take longer. They have to age. They sit in a dry, cool place for months or even years before they’re ready to go to the store. They can come in really big, round wheels. The wheels get sliced up and sold.

Yogurt Yogurt is also made with milk. Good bacteria are added to the milk. Yogurt is made with a few types of bacteria. They won’t make you sick. They just help turn the milk into yogurt. Next, the milk mixture is kept warm. The bacteria have to be warm in order to turn the milk into yogurt. After a while, the yogurt is cooled down. That stops the bacteria from working. But they’re still in there. Some yogurt is left plain. Other yogurt has stuff added to it, like fruit and sugar. Sometimes fruit is put into the bottom of a container first. Then the yogurt is put on top. For other brands, the flavorings are added right to the yogurt. Then the yogurt is put into a container.

Butter Butter is made in a different way. Again, we start with milk. But we end up with something very different than cheese or yogurt.

Make Your Own Butter Making butter is really simple. You just need some heavy cream and a jar. Pour the cream into the jar. Now shake it for a long time. You might have to switch out with someone if you get tired. Keep a close eye on the cream. It starts getting less watery. First, it turns into whipped cream. When you keep shaking it, all of a sudden it splits into butter and buttermilk. You’ll miss it if you forget to watch!

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People used to make butter in a churn like this one. The churn has a handle in the middle that a person holds onto, moving it up and down. After some time, the cream in the churn turns into butter!

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Milk contains cream in it when it comes from the cow or goat. You can let fresh milk sit for a few hours. Then the cream rises to the top. Factories can also spin the milk very quickly. That makes the cream rise to the top faster. Once the cream is split up from the milk, it can become butter. The cream has to be mixed up for a bit. The mixing is called churning. After a while, the fat in the cream is pulled from the liquid. The fat becomes butter. The liquid is called buttermilk.

Milk is pasteurized in tanks like this one. Pasteurizing the milk (heating it to kill germs) is the best way to make sure that it doesn’t make people sick.

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It’s not quite butter yet, though. It has too much liquid in it. The buttermilk is drained off. The butter that’s left has to be moved around some more to get rid of any extra buttermilk. Sometimes, salt is added to butter. Then it’s patted into shape. It turns from a glob into the sticks you take home from the grocery store. Finally, the butter is cooled so that it’s hard and solid.

Ice Cream Ice cream is made from milk right from the dairy farms. First, the milk is cleaned. Then, the factory adds eggs and sugar for a few minutes. This is when the milk mixture is pasteurized. It’s heated for a few seconds. Any bacteria in it are killed. Like regular milk, the ice cream mixture is homogenized. All of the fat in the mixture gets mixed up in the liquid. The mixture is still pretty hot. Ice cream is cold, though! So now the mix gets cooled down (but not frozen). At this point, it’s almost ice cream. It needs some flavor though. The cold mixture gets put into big tanks. Flavors are added, like fruit, vanilla, or chocolate. To make the mix into ice cream, it’s put in a big freezer. In the freezer, air gets put into the mixture. The air gives it a nice, creamy texture. Last, the factory puts the ice cream in containers. Then it’s ready to go the store!

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Chapter FIVE

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How Do Dairy Products Get to Your Plate?

ou’ve already learned how dairy products get from the farm to the factory. What happens after that?

Close to Home Maybe your milk comes from the same area where you live. It doesn’t have to go very far. Lots of farmers in one area send their milk to the factory. Then the milk gets processed. It’s sent to grocery stores around the same area. Selling dairy products in the area where they are made can be a good idea, especially for milk. Milk doesn’t have a long life. Dairy products start to go bad before too long. It takes longer to ship them somewhere else. By selling dairy products near where they were made, customers can enjoy them longer.

Next time you’re at the grocery store, think of the long trip the milk, cheese, and butter took. Think about all the people who helped get your food to you!

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Milk is moved in trucks like this one. The tank that holds the milk is kept cold. That way, the milk doesn’t go bad on its way to the store or factory.

Local Dairy Not all dairy ends up in grocery stores. You can buy it right from the farmer too. Or you can go to a farmers’ market. At a farmers’ market, local farmers sell the things they grow and make. There might be a dairy farmer at your local farmers’ market. Or you might have a store that only sells things made in your area. Local dairy is as fresh as you can get it, unless you milk an animal yourself!

Across the Country Some dairy products last longer. Factories can make cheese and send it across the country. Trucks and trains can be refrigerated today. That lets us send dairy products from one side of a country to another.

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You can find some of the same kinds of yogurt and butter across your country. It doesn’t matter where you are. Some kinds of dairy products are in just about every grocery store around.

Around the World Just like we can send dairy products across countries, we can also send them across the world. People have to use boats or planes to send dairy products so far. Some places are famous for their dairy. Certain cheeses only come from Italy or France, for example. People make the cheese there. Then they send it to everyone in the world who wants some. You can get Parmesan cheese from Italy. You can eat butter from Ireland. You can buy yogurt from Turkey. We can eat dairy products from cows and other animals that live all around the world. We don’t always think about where our food comes from. But it doesn’t start out in the fridge or the grocery store. People work hard to make the food you eat—and it all comes from the earth. So next time you drink some milk or eat cheese, think for a minute. Think about all the steps it took for that dairy product to get to you. You have lots of people to thank for that one bite or sip!

Labels How do you know where your milk or cheese comes from? Look at the package. It usually has a label that says where it started out.

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Words to Know bacteria: Tiny creatures so small you can’t see them. Some can make people sick, but most don’t, and some even help keep people healthy.

customer: A person who buys something, including food. flavoring: Ingredients added to food to change the way it tastes. ingredient: A food that is mixed with others to make a new food. liquid: Something that flows like water, milk, or oil. processed: The way ingredients are mixed or changed in a factory to become the food we eat. products: Things people make, buy, and sell. protein: A part of food that helps build strong muscles and keep people healthy. Meat, milk, and other dairy products have a lot of protein.

udders: The part of the cow milk comes from.

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Find Out More Online EU Bookshop: Where Does Milk Come From? bookshop.europa.eu/en/where-does-milk-come-from--pbKF3209171/ ?CatalogCategoryID=Bfq ep2IxkSwAAAEuj40D0UzZ Fernleaf Institute www.fernleafinstitute.com/wps/wcm/connect/fernleaf/fernleaf/home/familyhealth/ activitiesforkids/anchor_familyhealth_forkids_milkcomefrom Where Is My Milk From? whereismymilkfrom.com

Where Your Food Comes From urbanext.illinois.edu/food

In Books Peterson, Chris. Clarabelle: Making Milk and So Much More. Honesdale, Penn.: Boyds Mill Press, Inc, 2007. Pollan, Michael. The Ominvore’s Dilemma (Young Reader’s Edition). New York: Penguin, 2009.

Reilly, Kathleen M. Food: 25 Amazing Projects. White River Junction, Ver.: Nomad Press, 2010.

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INDEX bacteria: 20–21, 26, 33–34, 36, 38 ice cream: 10–11, 16, 26, 31, 38–39 buffaloes: 11, 24 India: 24, 29 butter: 11, 16, 24, 26, 29, 31, 36, 37, 42, 43–44 meat: 8, 15, 17, 26 cheese: 9–11, 13–18, 24, 27–29, 31, 34–36, 42– milk: 8–11, 13–18, 20–21, 23–26, 28–29, 31– 44 34, 36, 38, 39, 41–44 China: 29 cows: 8, 11, 15, 17, 20, 23–26, 29, 31–33 pasteurization: 20, 21, 33 cream: 10–11, 16, 26, 31, 33, 36–39 Russia: 29 European Union: 29 scientists: 13, 26 factories: 26, 27, 29, 34, 36, 43 United States: 21, 29 farmers: 8, 18, 20, 23–24, 26, 29, 31­–33, 43 grocery store: 7–8, 11, 16, 21, 28, 31, 36, 41–44 yaks: 11 yogurt: 9–11, 15–18, 24, 26, 31, 36, 43–44 homogenization: 33

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About the Author Kim Etingoff lives in Boston, Massachusetts, spending part of her time working on farms. Kim enjoys connecting people of all ages to agriculture and teaching others where their food comes from.

Picture Credits Dreamstime.com AMCphotos: p. 10 Ammit: p. 25 Baloncici: p. 38 Catalin Stefan: p. 9 Daniel Hurst: p. 30 Dvkorn: p. 32 Eyewave: p. 37 Gavril Margittai: p. 19 Georgios Kollidas: p. 20 Gozzoli: p. 43 Jose Manuel Gelpi Diaz: p. 40 Julie Feinstein: p. 28 Karam Miri: p. 12 Kheng Guan Toh: p. 27, 35 Monkey Business Images: p. 8 Og-vision: p. 6 Picsfive: p. 33 Pooldodo: p. 22 Rauf Ashrafov: p. 17 Serban Enache: p. 18 Steve Allen: p. 24 Tuulijumala: p. 16 Tyler Olson: p. 42 Ukrphoto: p. 14

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