Did You Know There’s a Cool Hidden Secret on Every Idaho Milk Jug?

Whether you’re pouring it over your kid’s cereal, adding a splash to your coffee or using it to whip up something delicious, milk is a staple in Idaho kitchens. You go through a lot of it and we bet you never knew about the secret code on your milk jug.

We’re sure you probably check the sell-by date before tossing a gallon of milk into your cart at WinCo or Albertsons or before you give the sniff test to see if it’s gone bad. Have you noticed there’s another number printed near the expiration date? That tiny detail can actually tell you a bigger story about exactly where your milk came from.

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Here’s an example of a half gallon of Lucerne 2% milk that we recently bought at Albertsons.

See that number-and-dash combo that says 16-05? It’s not some random number. According to Cornell University, the first two digits symbolize which state your milk originated in. Idaho’s code for milk production is 16, so if you see that you know your milk was sourced in locally. If you see a 53, your milk came from Washington state. If it says 41, it's from Oregon.

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The next numbers, which can be up to five characters long, tell you exactly which dairy your milk came from. But how do you find which dairy belongs to that next code? There’s a website called “Where is My Milk From?” where you can type in your code and find out which dairy your milk’s from. We tried it with the milk in the picture above and was pretty surprised by what we found out (but not in a bad way.)

Lucerne is the store brand milk at Albertsons, but our milk came from the Meadow Gold Dairy in Boise! Why did that surprise us? Not because the milk was local, but because of the price difference. The Lucerne milk we bought was $2.29, which is its regular price. The same milk in the actual Meadow Gold branded container? Normally $2.79, on-sale for $2.49.

Idaho’s the third-largest milk-producing state in the country, which makes this code a fun teaching moment. Now that you know, you can teach your kids that their milk came from cows they saw grazing while you were on a family road trip!