Hay milk marketing stopped in Austria

The successful marketing campaign for ‘hay milk,’ 400 million kg of which was processed last year by Austrian dairies, has been stopped by a court injunction in Salzburg. The contention is over the advertising slogan which translates as “Hay milk – the purest milk” used over several years now by the Hay Milk Association, which represents 8,000 dairy farmers and some 60 milk processors in the country. Plaintiff is Tyrolean industrialist Fritz Egger, who is also a large-scale farmer. Hay milk is from cows fed only on hay as forage during winter as opposed to the much more common (and much more financially efficient) fermented grass or maize known collectively as silage.

Just as in the many legal challenges on the continent over the multiple health claims for drinkers of probiotic yogurts, the complaint is that the term “the purest milk” is unjustified and largely unproven. The hay milk association is pledging to fight the injunction. There’s certainly a lot of money – and possibly upland farmer survival – at stake. Hay milk is sold as basis for drinking milk and dairy drinks mainly in southern Germany, Austria and Switzerland. But it is also now basis for cheeses selling the world over. It earns Austrian dairymen a bonus stretching from €0.03 to as much as €0.06 per litre. Last year extensive marketing campaigns using the now contested slogan raised fresh product sales from hay milk on a tonnage basis by 8% and hay milk cheese sales by 1%, according to the association. Total turnover in 2012 was up on the year by 12.6%.