Draft regulations for marketing and quality standards of drinking milk have been issued for consultation in the UK.
These provide for the enforcement of European legislation and will revoke the UK’s existing drinking milk regulations entirely.
Principal features include a requirement for drinking milk to comply with new fat and protein content and sales description requirements, a provision allowing protein enrichment and lactose reduction and a prohib-ition of imports into the EU for sale as drinking milk if they do not comply with the regulations.
Downward adjustment of protein content (protein standardisation) will continue to be prohibited and the proposed regulations give food authorities policing powers and permit penalties to be applied where regulations have been contravened.
Compositional requirements, which came into force on 1 January 1998, were largely unchanged from those applying under previous EU laws, with one exception