There are few things I enjoy more than my early morning cuppa. The alarm goes at 5.45am. I roll over and switch on Farming Today, by which time my wife will have handed me a cup of delicious steaming tea, made with real fresh cows milk. A little later, in the kitchen, I have a bowl of cornflakes, also with real milk. Its what gets me going in the mornings.
When I stay in a hotel and the only milk available for making tea is UHT in a little pot that may have been there for weeks, I usually don't even bother. And the idea of eating cornflakes with UHT fills me with horror. No thankyou. Its not what I want to put in my mouth. And I suspect the majority of British people that still have taste buds feel the same way.
But DEFRA, in its wisdom (or otherwise) has issued a discussion document advocating we change our habit of using fresh or pasteurised milk to one of drinking UHT. It is in the interests of climate change, apparently, and in theory should cut emissions of greenhouse gases. How that can be I do not understand given that UHT has to be heated, cooled and packed in plastic.
Whether or not the calculation on greenhouse gases is true I will fight hard for the continuation of fresh milk. And if the future of the world depends on using UHT instead my only retort, and I do not mean it in a blasphemous way, is God help us.