0401 · Milk and cream, not concentrated nor containing added sugar or other sweetening matter
In so far as the products contain no additions other than those provided for in the HS General Explanatory Note to this chapter, second paragraph, this heading includes:
1. full-cream milk, unprocessed, and such milk partially or completely skimmed;
2. pasteurised milk, i.e., milk, the keeping qualities of which have been improved by partial elimination of microbial growths by means of heat treatment;
3. sterilised milk, including UHT milk, which keeps longer, the microbial growths having been virtually eliminated by a more extensive heat treatment;
4. homogenised milk, in which the fat globules of the natural emulsion have been fragmented — by mechanical means under very high pressure linked with heat treatment — into glomerules of smaller dimensions, which partially prevents the formation of cream;
5. peptonised milk, i.e. milk, the digestibility of which has been improved by adding pepsins to process the proteins;
6. cream, which is the fatty layer which forms naturally on the top of standing milk by slow agglomeration of the fatty emulsifying globules. Whether removed by hand or extracted by centrifuging the milk in a cream separator, it contains, in addition to the other constituents of milk, a fairly high fat content (usually exceeding 10 % by weight). Certain centrifuge processes produce creams with a fat content in excess of 50 % by weight.
Cream is regarded as ‘not concentrated’ within this heading, no matter what its percentage of fat content, so long as it has been obtained wholly:
(a) by skimming the surface of the milk,
(b) by centrifuging.
However, ‘concentrated’ cream produced by different means, such as the evaporation of water during heat treatment, falls in heading 0402.