‘Where is my Milk From?’

You don’t need me to tell you that buying local is hot with the natural product consumer. She wants to support local farmers with her fruit purchases, and make sure her packaged goods create as small a carbon footprint at possible. With help of a handy Web site I found called, “Where is my milk from?” shoppers and retailers can find out where their dairy products originated.

By inputting the code located near the expiration date on a container, shoppers can find out where milk, yogurt, butter and even soy milk came from. Trevor Fitzgerald, a senior at Brigham Young University studying information systems, created this site using information from the Interstate Milk Shippers list published by FDA in conjunction with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Public Health Service. Basically, Fitzgerald made a complicated government report into a searchable database.

I couldn’t wait to try it out. I don’t drink dairy milk (and the list doesn’t include almond milk manufacturers), but my boyfriend does. I found out his milk comes from a farm in Tolleson, AZ, which is about 15 miles from our house. That’s pretty local! Pretty soon I pulled out every dairy item in my fridge. However, I got error codes for my yogurt, my boyfriend’s yogurt (no, we don’t share) and the cream cheese. So, the system isn’t fool-proof, but at least I can congratulate my boyfriend on shopping local with his milk purchase.

Try this out with products in your store and encourage your shoppers to do the same. This is just another way to tout how your store supports the local farms and help reduce CO2 emissions.