Milk

John Hammond's research is aimed at selling milk, just like any milk-mustachioed celebrity.But not as a drink -- as an antiseptic.Hammond, a research plant pathologist at the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center, is infecting tobacco plants with a common plant virus and a milk-treated virus to find out why milk can kill many of the maladies that damage everything from alfalfa to orchids.Based on experiments that he began in July, the initial results are promising, he said.Hammond said tobacco plants that he infected last summer by dabbing pure extract of tobacco mosaic virus on their leaves had about 40 times more lesions, or brown spots, than the plants infected with the milk-treated virus.

It was 10 years ago that Jeff Goodby began dreaming up an ad campaign for the milk industry that focused, oddly enough, on the absence of the product. "Milk deprivation" was the theme, built on the concept that consumers strongly identified milk with certain foods - cereal, cookies, cupcakes - but thought about the bland and ubiquitous beverage only when they ran out of it. As Goodby's agency prepared its pitch for the $25 million account, an employee asked Goodby to offer up a headline for a presentation board that explained the strategy.

Patty Sullivan of Catonsville is stumped by the dairy case. One kind of milk promises to make her children smarter. Another claims to come from healthier cows. Unable to sort all that out, she reaches for good old, conventional Costco milk."I find it very confusing," said Sullivan, who picks up five gallons a week for the Burtonsville preschool she runs. "You need a research degree to find out the differences. And is it really that much better for you?" Not long ago, consumers only had to ponder one thing before hefting a gallon jug into the shopping cart: How much fat did they want?

A fire erupted in a milk dryer at the Maryland-Virginia Milk Producers Cooperative in North Laurel yesterday, but Howard County fire officials said there was little damage because sprinklers doused the fire before it could spread.The fire began about 2:15 p.m. at the plant between Gorman Road and Route 216, said Lt. Chris Cangemi, a spokesman for the Howard County Department of Fire and Rescue.He said damage was confined to the dryer, which turns milk into evaporated milk.Workers at the cooperative were checking into mechanical problems to find the source of the problem, fire officials said.

Can you substitute soy milk for regular milk in recipes? Originally seen as a fringe hippie drink, soy milk has sales that have more than quadrupled in the past decade. In 1997, total sales were $156 million; in 2003, $652 million, according to the Soyfoods Association of America. Nancy Chapman, SAA's executive director, said sales have been driven at least partly by consumers' growing awareness of soy milk's health benefits. "It provides a high-quality protein without the saturated fat and cholesterol of cow's milk," she said.

Like many parents, when I read about the recent attack on milk, I got scared.Here were these doctors with white coats and long titles saying that kids should not, repeat not, drink their milk. They claimed that research indicated cow's milk might give kids juvenile diabetes or lower their blood pressure.They asserted kids should get their calcium, an essential nutrient in cow's milk, from kale, broccoli, collard greens or spinach.I was rattled, but not about the health considerations. I figured like most scare-the-pants-off-parents nutrition stories, this one would soon be shot down by another group of doctors with more white coats, longer titles and better research.

A pint of milk a day may lower the risk of heart attack, according to a new British study.Once considered forbidden for people on low-fat diets, milk may actually lower the risk of heart disease.A 10-year study of 5,000 British men between the ages of 45 and 59 found that only 1 percent of men who drank at least a pint of whole milk a day suffered heart attacks.In contrast, 10 percent of the non-milk drinkers in the study had heart attacks, said lead researcher Dr. Peter Elwood of the Medical Research Council's epidemiology unit at Llandough Hospital in Penarth, Wales.

Maryland's dairy industry is on its way to being studied once again as the House of Delegates passed a bill last night appointing a 17-member task force to look into the future of milk production.The current bill, submitted by Del. Donald B. Elliott of New Windsor, is vastly different from the one he and other sponsors introduced earlier this session.That proposal would have created a seven-member milk commission to regulate prices paid to farmers for raw milk.Supporters of the original bill, mainly farmers from Carroll and other western dairy counties, told the House Environmental Matters Committee March 7 that dairymen from Virginia and Pennsylvania are dumping excess milk in Maryland and undercutting prices.

A bill before the House of Delegates Environmental Matters Committee to create a Maryland milk commission was withdrawn by its sponsors yesterday and recommended for summer study.The withdrawal grew from a hallway compromise between milk cooperatives, who supported the bill, and processors, primarily large supermarket chains such as Giant Food and Safeway, who felt they hadn't had enough input on the bill while dairy farmers waited in the committee room to testify.State officials who were planning to support the bill suddenly announced yesterday that they would be neutral on the legislation.

Marlin Hoff, a Carroll County dairy farmer, lost $800,000 over the past two years as milk prices plunged to their lowest levels in more than two decades. "It makes you feel kind of bad when you get to the point that you think about retiring," said Hoff, 65, who owns Coldsprings Farm in New Windsor. "I lost a good piece of my equity." But he and other dairy farmers are starting to smile again as milk prices have suddenly reversed, shooting up to record levels. The average price for a gallon of milk in Baltimore stores hit $3.19 in March, up 26 percent from a low in February 2003, according to federal statistics.