Informations on a milk carton

On a milk carton there are various indications that inform consumers of the milk’s origin, composition and conservation.

Some key information to understand what’s written on our cartons :

• You can generally identify the type of milk thanks to the colour of the carton. Indeed, in France we usually use these colors to distinguish the milk cartons:

– Red for whole milk

– Blue for semi-skimmed milk

– Green for skimmed milk

Whole milk contains 3.6% of fat, semi-skimmed, 1.5%, and skimmed milk doesn’t contain any fat at all.

• UHT milk

Besides the type of milk, the name of the product and its brand, the term “UHT” is written on milk cartons.  UHT stands for “Ultra High Temperature”. This means that in our dairies, the sterilisers heat the milk at 142°C in order to provide a long shelf life (up to 9 months).

 • The identification and health mark informs consumers about the milk’s origin

Health marks are oval-shaped markings found on food products of animal origin in the European Community.

Every processing establishment in the EU that produces and packages animal origin products must be identified by a health mark that guarantees the products’ compliance with the European hygiene standards.

It identifies where it was produced: the country, the exact place and processing plant were it was made.

• The first letters identifies in which country the product was processed

Our milk is processed in France à FR

• Then, there’s a sequence of numbers identifying precisely where the processing establishment is located.

The first two digits represent the French county. Our milk in processed in the Puy-de-Dôme County: 63

The next 3 digits represent the municipality.The municipality of Theix, where we produce our milk, is officially identified by the number 345

And at the end of this sequence , comes the number that our dairy has been assigned to by the health authorities : 002

• CE stands for Communauté Européenne: European Community in French, and certifies that the product has been processed in compliance with the European standards.
• Our cartons are certified under the FSC eco-label.Indeed, our milk cartons are made out of carton that comes from eco-responsible sources.This FSC label testifies that the recovered materials used to make the packaging  are traceable.