One of south-east South Australia's biggest dairy producers is feeding his cows chocolate and lollies to improve their milk production while also reducing waste that would otherwise have gone to landfill.
James Mann runs more than 4,000 head of cattle at Wye, south-east of Mount Gambier.
Rather than feeding his cows sugar for energy, as some dairy farmers do, he is feeding them the rejects from Mondelez's confectionery factories in Melbourne.
He says the cows like it, and they do not seem to have a preference for any particular type of chocolate or lollies.
"Whatever Cadbury is making and don't quite make the grade, our cows are pretty happy to see it — blocks of chocolate, snakes, Cherry Ripes, nougat, honeycomb — anything that Cadbury makes the cows get to have a chew on it," he says.
Some of the chocolate and lollies look similar to what humans would eat, while some are in giant blocks and yet more again are crushed up or in their component parts.
Mr Mann, who is also the chair of Dairy Australia, used to feed his cattle pure sugar, but price fluctuations made it difficult to contain costs.
The chocolate and lollies are mixed with the cattle's other feed.
They also eat grass.
He says cows need sugar and oil in their diet, and chocolate has both.
"It's all around maximising cows' performance," Mr Mann says.
Cows helping reduce landfill
While Mondelez did not reply to a request for comment, Mr Mann says he believes the chocolate and lollies would have otherwise gone to the dump.
"It's part of recycling," he says.
"I'm not certain what happened to it before, but I guess at one stage it would have gone to landfill.
"It must be better to get another use out of it when it ends up as food that people can't eat, so from that point of view it's good."
Stop Food Waste Australia chief operating officer Mark Barthel says food waste would ideally be prevented altogether in factories but food going to animals is the next best thing.
"Sending food that would otherwise go to landfill and that is suitable for feeding animals to farmers and growers to use as animal feed is perfectly legitimate and far better than all of our food going to landfill," he says.
And, yes, Mr Mann has heard the joke that his farm is where chocolate milk comes from.
"We've always had a bit of: 'We'll handle the chocolate milk out of this dairy, I'm hoping someone's handling the strawberry milk from another dairy,'" Mr Mann says.
The milk does not taste significantly different and is mixed with milk from hundreds of other dairy farms when it is processed.
In a twist, though, the milk from Mr Mann's farm actually does go into cartons of Farmers Union and Pura flavoured milks made at Bega's factory in Adelaide.
