In past 12 months average butterfat content of milk fell The compositional quality of milk has fallen as a result of the rainfall Britain is enduring. As every good dairy farmer knows, cows are just like humans in that they prefer sun on their backs to incessant rain. While many of us can flock to the sun to escape Britain's constant downpours, our cows have no choice but to graze and bear it. But they are clearly less contented in the rain. Proof of this comes from ministry of agriculture data on the average compositional quality of UK produced milk in the year to March ­ a year of record rainfall. Over the past 12 months, the average butterfat (or cream) content of all UK produced milk fell to 4.01%, which was slightly lower than the 4.02% average a year earlier and even more down on the 4.06% recorded in 1998/99. The decline may not be dramatic but is even more significant against the longer-term trend, which has been consistently upwards. The ministry also measures the average milk protein content of milk and, here again, the trend over the past year was downwards ­ from 3.30% to 3.28%. - Milk production in the EU is likely to stabilise in 2000 and 2001 after generally exceeding quota levels in previous years. In the 11 months to February 2001, production is likely to have totalled 104.5 million tonnes for the EU compared with 105.3 in the same period the previous year. To some extent the overall output reduction is likely to be due to FMD, but is also due to lower milk deliveries in some countries in response to the cost of exceeding quota in previous years according to German market intelligence agency ZMP. {{M/E MEAT }}

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