Piedmont Milk

Piedmont Milk Data
Contact: Bill Moore- manager
Piedmont Milk is not a cooperative-- it is a middle man linking producers with processing plants like Hunter Farms. Under USDA Federal Orders, based on geographic boundaries, non members of cooperatives are assigned processing plants. This is because under the Copper Volstead Act, cooperatives are authorized to operate and allowed autonomy for production. Producers not in a cooperative cannot operate independently and are thus assigned processing plants.

Image from inside a dairy showing automatic milking machines. (courtesy of the QCTimes)

Farmers milk the cows twice a day and it is moved directly into insulated holding tank cooled to between 37 and 38 degrees in less than an hour. By regulation, milk has to be removed from the farm and picked up every other day. It is then taken to a processing plant. Three tests are then done on the milk-- antibiotic check (to look for allergic reactions), cryoscopy (to look for added water), and bacteria pre pasteurization (to look for parts per million). The milk is then pasteurized at the bottler at 195 degrees for 2-3 minutes. After this it is homogenized to stop cream from separating and bottled.

Milk Tanks specially cooled to store milk until pickup at the farms (Image courtesy of the Shanghai Stainless Steel Vessel Co.)



Specially cooled milk trucks are required by law to pick up milk from dairies every other day. (Image courtesy of Penn State University)

Spatial info:
Specifically for hunter farms: It is not uncommon at this time of year for surplus milk to be shipped from as far as NY or even New Mexico, however, the bulk of milk production predesignated for hunter farms comes from between Rocky Mount NC and Wyphville V.A. Primary producers are in Alagaines County, Burlington NC across to Liberty/Snow Camp NC, then on the other side of 85 producers are mainly in Statesville. From dairy to production plant is an average elapsed time of an hour.

Here is a flow chart of milk production:

(Image courtesy of alibaba.com)

-Information from phone interview with Dwight Moore of Hunter Farms and personnel from Piedmont Milk