No one’s crying over expired milk this time.

Organizing, preparing, and managing school lunches is serious business. With hundreds of children’s health and safety on the line, schools are under the gun to make sure everything is safe and on the level. In fact, it’s even a custom in Japanese schools for the principal to eat lunch first to make sure it’s safe for everyone else.

Still, quality issues can always find a way to slip through the cracks by human error or plain bad luck. Such an incident occurred at a junior high school in Amagasaki City, Hyogo Prefecture, but in a seemingly miraculous fashion resulted in no health issues or even mild discomfort for those involved.

▼ It appears no one was lactose intolerant either.

On 5 September, the school served 200-milliliter (7-ounce) cartons of milk as a part of the usual lunch program. However, like a game of creamy Russian roulette, hidden among the scores of cartons were two with an expiry date of 27 July, one best before 29 March, and two dating way back to 4 February, almost seven months old to the date.

The milk was consumed by both students and faculty members, but as of 9 September, when the mistake was announced, there were no reported negative health effects of drinking the old milk. In fact, according to the faculty members who drank it, it didn’t taste any different from regular milk.

The accident occurred when expired milk was being cleaned out of a refrigerator intended for faculty and staff. Apparently, some of those cartons had gotten mixed up with the fresh cartons set to be distributed the same day.

Readers of the news online were understandably shocked by the outcome of milk that, under normal circumstances, should have been biohazardous by such a point.

“What?! No health problems?!”
“Amazing! I can’t believe they kept milk around for 7 months and there were no problems!”
“It tasted like regular milk… Whaaaaa?!”
“I used to work in a school lunch program, and this is why they shouldn’t give leftovers to staff.”
“I ate some unopened yogurt one month past the date and ended up in bed for a week.”
“Seriously?! After seven months, it must have tasted a little off.”
“I wonder if they’re just trying to downplay it.”
“If it’s a ‘best before’ date, that’s fine, but if it’s a ‘use by’ date, then it’s dangerous.”

There’s a rather simple explanation as to why everyone was OK and even satisfied with the old milk, as well as why everyone else is confused by this. Milk treated by ultra-high temperature (UHT) sterilization is commonly sold in Asia and Europe, often under names like “shelf-stable milk” or “long-life milk,” because it can be kept unopened for quite a long time at room temperature.

Japan is no exception, and, in fact, over 90 percent of the milk sold here is UHT-sterilized. However, most people aren’t aware of this because almost none of it is marketed as shelf-stable milk in Japan at all. Under the belief that Japanese consumers prefer freshness over processing, UHT milk is sold exactly as if it were regularly pasteurized milk, which requires refrigeration at all times.

Because of this, when checking most cartons in Japan, you probably won’t see any indication at all that it has a long shelf life. The trick is to look at the label and find something like 130℃2秒間, which means it was sterilized at 130 degrees Celsius (266 degrees Fahrenheit) for two seconds. If it’s anything over 120 degrees, you’re probably looking at UHT-sterilized milk. For comparison’s sake, regular North American milk is usually pasteurized at around 75 degrees for 15 seconds.

The final comment above was on the right track in that when selling UHT-sterilized milk, companies will put ‘best before’ dates in the relatively near future, similar to pasteurized milk, to perpetuate the image of freshness for consumers. This isn’t technically fraudulent since a best before date, or “shomi kigen” in Japanese, is not a safety limit but a period in which the manufacturer will guarantee quality.

Despite its longer-than-labeled life, even UHT has its limits, and seven months is likely pushing it. In this particular case, however, the milk was aided by being kept in a fridge that clearly wasn’t being used often, where it could remain at a constantly low temperature in a closed environment. As a result, they got milk that was more or less as good as the day they bought it.

Now that you know the milk you’re drinking in Japan is probably way more durable than it lets on to be, a very important thing to note is not all milk in Japan is UHT-sterilized, so be sure to check the label carefully before getting loosey-goosey with it for your own safety.

Source: Sun TV News, Hachima Kiko, Kokokara
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