New milk source “shows promise” say baby formula experts

Jack Gruner (reprinted from the Lancer, edition 1198) | Apr 04, 2018

As the Kingston Economic Development Corporation (KEDCO) and the Frontenac County Economic Development Department continue their efforts to foster a massive expansion to the capacity of the Ontario goat milk industry, a new milk source that may be even better than goat milk is being studied by Queen’s University researchers.

Feihe is a Chinese baby formula company that is building a plant near Kingston in what was a major coup for KEDCO. The company is intent on establishling two production lines, one using skim milk which is available from Ontario dairy producers, and another using goat milk, which is not readily available in Ontario in the quantities required for the massive Chinese market.

“We know that it has been a major undertaking for KEDCO and Feihe to interest investors in large scale goat farming, said Professor Justine Schmolka, the Dupont Professor of Agri-business Technology and Innovation in the Queen’s Biology department, “so I assigned some of my top students with an open-ended goal of finding a solution to the conundrum of the goat milk shortage.”

The students worked in teams, and one of the teams, team R, came to Professor Schmolka, just one day after receiving the assignment, with a question.

“They asked me if they could look into a solution that did not require goats but still produced a baby formula with the qualities that Feihe researchers had found when they used goat milk. I took a leap of faith and said yes,” recalled Schmolka.

Within a few weeks, after a number of all-nighters in the field and in the Queen’s bio-lab, the students came up with a radical solution, beaver milk.

The definitive study of beaver lactation is called “Lactation and chemical composition of milk of the European beaver” by the team of Zurowski, Kisza, Kruk and Roskosz.

They determined that although the volume of milk is low, the fat content is unusually high and there are unique properties to the milk.

“Lactose content was low, and decreased significantly over time, from 4.62 +/- 0.1% to 2.65 +/- 0.1%. 4. Milk production peaked at day 14 and ceased by day 35. 5. The unusual milk composition of this tropical rodent, is one of several adaptations correlated with reproduction in a xeric environment,” said the study (ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1975538)

The Queen’s researchers did field work with the Canadian beaver in recent weeks, and found that the lactose content in the Frontenac County beavers they studied was higher than their long lost European cousins, but the unusual milk composition was the same.

“They also found, and this is the exciting aspect of the research, that the milk of the beaver is so dense that it can be frozen without affecting its consistency or nutritional value, and can be diluted with purified water by a factor of 1.04 +/- 0.04% to 467.086 +/- 0.07%. This can yield a product that can then be manufactured into a baby formula with a nutritional value that is significantly higher than that of either cows or goats milk, in high volume,” said Professor Schmolka.

With climate change, Canadian beavers are birthing earlier than before, in mid-March, with peak lactation on April 1st in a typical year.

“Beavers are still in their lodges on April 1st, so they are easy to find, and using underwater boats, we can locate them and hijack their lactation,” said Lucille Welch, one of the Queen’s students in the ‘R’ team. “It sounds complicated but it is really quite easy, and beaver lodges are easy to find.”

Based on preliminary estimates, it would take 1150 beavers to produce enough milk to run the plant for a year, once the milk was diluted.

“There is no reason this can’t be done, given enough time and resources,” said Schmolka, who presented her findings to a team of Feihe scientists last Sunday.

Schmolka said that the beaver population would not be specifically impacted, and locations where nuisance beavers are a concern would be prioritised over more remote locations.

While representatives from KEDCO and Feihe would not speak about the beaver milk proposal in specific terms because the research is so new, one Feihe marketing consultant said they did not think there would be huge resistance to the product in the Chinese market.

“In terms of branding the formula for our market, the made in Canada aspect is crucial. Since beavers are your national animal, we might be able to turn this to our advantage from a marketing and branding perspective” the consultant said, on condition of anonymity.