Vietnamese dairy company TH Milk has isolated a herd of 500 A2-producing cows, allowing it to offer consumers milk with no digestive discomfort.
The herd features cows that produce only the A2 beta-casein protein and not the A1 protein, which has been scientifically proven to be the source of lactose intolerance.
Depending on a cow’s genetic make-up, milk traditionally contains either A1 or A2 proteins, or a mix of both. Simple genetic tests can determine whether individual members of the herd are A1-A1 producers, A1-A2 producers, or A2-A2 producers. Yet many conventional dairies pool their milk during processing, making regular cow’s milk undrinkable to those with a lactose intolerance.
TH Milk’s new A2 milk operation has been set up on a 45,000-cow dairy farm in Nghĩa Đàn, in northern Vietnam.
The company will use the A2 herd’s milk to offer additional lines of “easily digestible milk products”, which FoodBev understands will consist initially of yogurt and fresh milk, to consumers within Vietnam.
Hoang Kim Giao, chairman of the Vietnam Ruminant Husbandry Association, said the decision by TH Milk to move into A2 milk was a good step for the country’s dairy industry.
Vietnamese consumers are interested in A2 milk, even though the product has a small share of the overall liquid milk market. The majority of products available at the moment are imported from Australia or New Zealand.
Although the range will be limited to Vietnam initially, the sidestep into A2 milk could give TH Milk the opportunity to grow export sales in future to countries where A2 milk products are popular – including China, the UK and the US.
TH Milk added: “Moving quickly and decisively [to set up an A2 milk pool] opens up a new era for Vietnam’s livestock industry and allows TH Milk to write its name in the history of the dairy industry as the first enterprise to breed selected A2-A2 dairy cows and produce A2 milk.”
Although fewer consumers are drinking milk, the number of those with a clinically identified lactose intolerance is much lower than the trend suggests.
At any rate, consumers with a lactose intolerance can often still drink A2 milk as it is the A1 beta-casein protein in milk that causes digestive discomfort, not the lactose itself. That theory was confirmed by recent research from Chinese scientists, published in Nutrition Journal, that provided a welcome vote of confidence for A2 producers.
With consumer scrutiny focusing on sugar instead, dairy has received somewhat of a reprieve in recent years, and many consumers are beginning to recognise the inherent nutritional value of milk again.
In the UK, research from the Food Standards Agency has indicated that almost a fifth of 16 to 24-year-olds claimed to be intolerant to cow’s milk and dairy products despite less than a quarter of those having had their intolerance diagnosed by a doctor. A leading osteoporosis charity in the country has warned against consumers cutting dairy out of their diet completely, citing the potential consequences on bone health later in life.
Studies have shown that around 60% of people on a global basis suffer from lactose intolerance – that’s over 4.5 billion people – but that figure is heavily dependent on race. Northern European consumers are more easily able to produce the enzyme lactase into adulthood, which then helps them digest milk, compared with people of Asian or African descent.
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