Imagine you’re going to the store to buy your favourite soft drink “Dubbel Friss”, you notice on the packaging that it “contains a bit of dairy”. You might gloss over it at the time but whether you ask it or not, the question remains: “Why is that?”. In this article we will go over why we see small amounts of dairy in otherwise non dairy products and what this can tell us about our relation to the dairy industry.
Unseen Cost of Milk Production
So let us start off by emphasizing that dairy production is expensive. Roughly 44% of our habitable land is used for agriculture. Of that land, 80% is used to feed and keep livestock. This does not even include the 628 litres of freshwater required to produce one litre of cow’s milk. Alongside are also the externalities caused by methane production during farming! All of these cost us greatly - so the question remains: “Why does this industry still exist?”.
Subsidies and Market Stability
Let’s talk about meat and dairy subsidies! The primary goal of these subsidies is to stabilise both production and the prices of these foods while also protecting the livelihoods of the farmers producing them. These subsidies help to stabilize the agricultural sector. In 2023, it was recorded that public funding for the production of animal products within the EU is roughly 1200 times greater than for alternative products. These subsidies shine in keeping the markets stable but they also conceal the real price of production and serve to maintain an industry that would otherwise be unsustainable.
What has been done?
Despite these statistics showing a relative disparity, it also shows that the EU has overall increased subsidies and funding for these alternatives to animal products. But progress does not go in a straight line and this brings us to the original question of this article. Back in 2023, there was a proposal in the Netherlands to instil a “sugar tax” on (non alcoholic) soft drinks, this tax specifically excluded dairy milk while still including other alternatives (except for soy). For a soft drink to be exempt from this tax, its mass percentage of milk fat has to be at least 0,02%. Hence, companies put small amounts of dairy in their soft drinks to avoid this tax increase.
To end, there is still a lot of progress to be made when it comes to shifting to a more sustainable mode of living, but changes are definitely being made. If you are going vegan like me, laws like the sugar tax might make your life more difficult which pushes the idea further that you have to make a lot of sacrifices to live that lifestyle. Because progress does not go in a straight line it remains important to be aware of new laws, such as the sugar tax, that end up working in favour of industries like dairy in an attempt to ensure stability.