Lactoferrin guides
The rest of the questions people arrive with.
Short answer
This section covers everything that is not a test result or a supplement decision: lactoferrin in breast milk and formula, how it compares with colostrum products, what pasteurization does to it, and the general questions people ask most often.
Lactoferrin comes up in more places than most people expect. It is a normal part of breast milk and is added to some infant formulas, which is the subject of the page on lactoferrin in baby formula: the levels US regulators have cleared, how those compare with breast milk, and why no formula is required to contain any. It is a component of colostrum supplements, which are often marketed alongside it and sometimes confused with it, so the first page here answers whether colostrum is the same as lactoferrin and what the measured amounts are. It is also affected by how milk is processed, which is why raw milk advocates tend to bring it up, and the page on foods high in lactoferrin carries the measured retention figures by temperature. A second page asks whether pasteurization removes lactoferrin from milk and works through what the carton has to declare and what it never says.
These pages take those questions one at a time, in the same format as the rest of the site: the answer first, then the explanation. Start with lactoferrin if you want the whole picture before the details.
- Is colostrum the same as lactoferrin, and does colostrum contain lactoferrin? No. Colostrum is the first milk an animal makes after giving birth. Lactoferrin is one of the proteins in it. So a colostrum supplement does contain lactoferrin, but it is a small part of what is in the jar: in cow colostrum, lactoferrin measures 1.5 to 5 mg per mL while immunoglobulin G measures 50 to 100 mg per mL. Nothing in US labeling rules requires a colostrum product to state how much lactoferrin it holds, and most say nothing about it.
- What foods have high lactoferrin? Milk, and almost nothing else. Colostrum, the first milk after birth, holds the most: 5 to 6 mg per mL in human colostrum and 1.5 to 5 mg per mL in cow colostrum. Mature cow's milk holds far less, 0.02 to 0.35 mg per mL. Heat then takes most of that away. In a 2026 comparison of processing temperatures, pasteurization at 75 °C for 15 seconds left about 65% of the lactoferrin in cow's milk, hotter pasteurization at 85 °C left 13%, and UHT milk held none the test could detect.
- Does pasteurization remove lactoferrin from milk? Mostly, yes, and how much it removes depends on how hot the milk got. Federal regulation lets a dairy product be called pasteurized after anything from 145 °F for 30 minutes to 212 °F for a hundredth of a second, and the carton does not say which was used. At the combination the FDA says the industry uses most, 161 °F for 15 seconds, a 2026 study measuring one farm's milk found about 65% of the lactoferrin still intact. Milk labeled ultra-pasteurized is heated to at least 280 °F, and at that kind of heat the same study detected none at all.
- Does baby formula contain lactoferrin, and how much? Some does, and no formula has to. Lactoferrin is not one of the 29 nutrients US law requires in infant formula, so a maker adds it by choice. Where it is added to a cow's-milk-based formula for term babies, the FDA record puts the level at 100 mg per 100 g of powder, which works out to roughly 13 mg per 100 mL once the bottle is made up. Mature human milk measures about 100 mg per 100 mL, so a formula at the cleared level carries somewhere near an eighth as much.
Where this comes from
- ARUP Laboratories test directory: Lactoferrin, Fecal by ELISA (test 0061164) — what the test is and how it is run
This page is general information, not medical advice, and not a recommendation to take anything. It cannot interpret your test result. Lactoferrin supplements are made from cow's milk and are unsuitable if you have a milk protein allergy. If you are pregnant, breastfeeding, giving anything to an infant, or being treated for a health condition, talk to a doctor or pharmacist first.