British Government favours UHT milk

The London Times reports that:

Officials at the [UK] Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs have made a serious proposal that consumers switch to UHT (Ultra-High Temperature or Ultra-Heat Treated) milk to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. It is part of a government strategy to ensure that some 90 per cent of milk on sale will not require refrigeration by 2020.

For all I know, this strategy might be justified. What concerns me is how it's arrived at. Refrigeration in supermarkets is a visible consumer of electricity and I suspect that's why the officials at DEFRA have picked on it. Have they compared it with other ways of reducing greenhouse gas emissions that may yield far more benefit? Why 90 per cent, rather than 80 or 95 per cent? Is a government agency the best placed to try to determine the trade-offs that consumers should make?

I think that if a government wants to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, then it should give consumers the option of how best to do so. I'd rather see government tackle target climate change itself rather than greenhouse gas emissions, but if it insists on targeting the latter, it should set broad targets and let the market decide on how they are to be met.