A2 Australia's Peter Nathan. Credit:Simon Schluter Unfortunately for Parmalat, it didn't take long for the word to get back to A2 headquarters. Just days after that Test match ended, full details of the discussion had been passed on. ''Interesting chat with someone at the cricket,'' read one email, which detailed the work done by ''Crosby Textor PR on a Parmalat campaign against your A2 brand''. The content of the email shocked senior A2 staff. ''Basically, they are feeling the pinch and Pauls milk is suffering,'' read the email. ''They want to somehow communicate to the public that A2 isn't what it is cracked up to be … The intention before Christmas was to use A Current Affair or something similar to get the story out. Just wanted to let you know you have obviously made an impact!''

For A2 Corporation chief executive Geoff Babidge, the news came as a surprise. Babidge had watched on through the first round of Australia's milk wars as the two big supermarket chains fought for control of the budget end of the raw milk market with $1-a-litre offerings. The thought that his company would be the next target had not crossed his mind. ''I was very surprised,'' Babidge said. ''We are milk producers. We provide a healthy product that is actually good for people. I just didn't think we were part of an industry that worked in this way.'' The truth is, the corporate world has always been tough for A2, which makes a product that trades on a quirk of biological science, and the inability of many people to consume dairy products without side effects. The story of A2 milk is a complicated one. To put it simply, cows produce milk with three types of protein profile. There is milk with A1 beta-casein protein, milk with A2 beta-casein protein, and milk with both.

Australia has 1.65 million cows that produce 9200 million litres of milk every year, the vast majority of which contains the A1 protein. In the late 1990s, New Zealand scientist Dr Corran McLachlan, a researcher into milk proteins, started working on the hypothesis that A2 milk was easier for some people to digest. He teamed up with entrepreneur Howard Paterson and in 2000, the A2 company was born. A simple genetic test, developed by The A2 Milk Company, can determine from a single hair from its tail whether a cow produces the A2 or A1 protein. Herds of cows now produce milk with only the A2 protein, but the fact is the science surrounding A2 milk has never been conclusive. Word-of-mouth support from many consumers, however, has been overwhelming. As a result, from the outset, A2 has faced vested interests that would like to see it killed off. And try to kill it off, they have. Lincoln University agribusiness professor Keith Woodford has documented the murky corporate games, favouritism and wild spin-doctoring that were rife once A2 milk took its first tentative steps into the New Zealand market.

His book, Devil in the Milk, showed how the New Zealand Food Safety Authority (NZFSA) had misrepresented the science and deceived the public as the debate on milk types heated up. The authority had two - some believed conflicting - strings to its bow. First, it was the government body responsible for food safety matters. Second, it was also acting as the controlling authority for the import and export of food and related products. In New Zealand, dairy is a $14 billion industry, and 95 per cent of its output is exported. As one of the world's biggest dairy economies, industry interests are powerful. As A2 launched, the NZFSA asked then Deakin University public health professor Boyd Swinburn, a former medical director of the National Heart Foundation of New Zealand, to review the scientific evidence on A1 and A2 milk. When the body released its final report in August 2004 - a full 13 months after receiving Swinburn's draft - it did not contain his original summary. Instead, a press release was issued with the authority's own version of the findings. It included a statement that there was ''no food safety issue with either type of milk''. That was something Swinburn had not actually said.

The NZFSA also said the review showed there was ''insufficient evidence to demonstrate benefits of one type of milk protein over another''. That was something else Swinburn never said. Eventually, after questions were asked in the New Zealand Parliament, the NZFSA was forced to release Swinburn's original summary. In it, Swinburn said the A1-A2 health questions ''were potentially very important for public health'' if proved correct. Many Australian consumers would agree. It was subsequently revealed by the New Zealand media that the NZFSA accepted advice and lobbying from dairy giant Fonterra during the review process. It was too late for A2, and the product never took off in its home country. The company's management decided to enter the Australian market and leave the politics and lobbying of New Zealand behind them. Unfortunately, Dairy Australia also engaged in questionable tactics during A2's early days. Fact sheets written by Dairy Australia nutritionists in 2007, just as A2 was launching, were published on its website.

The sheets quoted research by Sydney academic Stewart Truswell saying there was no convincing evidence that the A1 protein had adverse effects on humans. Truswell later admitted he had been paid by Fonterra as an expert on the A1-A2 issue. The fact sheets disappeared from the Dairy Australia website after questions from New Zealand newspaper The Press. Despite the occasional attacks, A2 has built a lucrative share of Australia's fresh milk market. From zero production in early 2007, 5 per cent of the fresh milk consumed in Australia is now made by A2. It is now the top-selling fresh milk brand in Australia's major supermarkets, and is rated one of the top 20 products sold by Coles and Woolworths, ranking alongside Coca-Cola and Tim Tam biscuits. A premium product in dollar terms, A2 now has 9 per cent of the supermarket milk market. While Coles and Woolworths have taken a large share of the cheap milk market with their $1 milk war, A2 has taken some of the cream at the top. The big global players (Parmalat, Lion and Fonterra) are all being squeezed in the middle. The net result, it seems, has been a renewed effort to kill A2.

According to a whistleblower, Parmalat hired lobby firm Crosby Textor late last year to help devise its media campaign against A2. Crosby Textor is best known for its political lobbying for conservative politicians. Co-founder Mark Textor is a close confidant of Tony Abbott, and the firm played key roles in the election of New Zealand Prime Minister John Key and London mayor Boris Johnson. According to insiders, it's in the world of corporate spin that the company ''pays its bills''. ''Political polling doesn't pay much, it just gives you influence when your side gets in,'' said one former Crosby Textor staffer. ''Corporate clients actually pay the bills''. Key clients include tobacco giant Philip Morris and the Distilled Spirits Industry Council of Australia, which is opposed to curbs on cheap booze.

Meetings on the Parmalat account were held in Crosby Textor's Sydney office, where it was decided that the science behind A2 would be targeted. ''This is the perfect Crosby Textor play,'' said one former staffer. ''They would call in focus groups and test them until they found the weak link, then they attack that weak link. Obviously with A2, the science has been the target.'' After they were contacted in January, A2 waited for the stories to appear. The first came in March in The Daily Telegraph. In that story Parmalat accused A2 of using ''misleading advertising and scare tactics to gain more market share''. Parmalat chief executive officer Craig Garvin was quoted in that story as saying: ''When you start trying to distinguish between the two by creating fear campaigns about everyday milk, that is a real problem.'' A journalist at the newspaper later confirmed that ''Parmalat was shopping the story''. A week later The Australian Financial Review published a similar story, in which Garvin accused A2 of running a scare campaign that denigrates normal milk and damages the dairy industry.

Last month a third story attacking A2 appeared in the Murdoch press, this time in The Australian. In that article, A2 was described as ''snake oil'' in a story, with the headline, ''Dairy rivals label A2 milk a scam''. Just three weeks after that story, the apparent endgame became clear. Parmalat relaunched its Pauls Zymil brand of lactose-free milk in Australia, which is aimed at A2's market. According to the advertising, Zymil is for those with ''uncomfortable tummy troubles'' when consuming dairy. ''We are certainly taken aback to learn what a competitor was doing,'' said A2 Australia CEO Peter Nathan. ''But given the market share one competitor has suffered, it's probably not surprising they went for this desperate measure.'' For Babidge, who is now overseeing the push of A2 into Parmalat's home markets in Europe, he believes time and further medical research will end the A1-A2 debate once and for all. ''What really sticks with me is that, as a company, we have grown the overall milk market,'' says Babidge. ''We have brought people back to milk and dairy who were drinking other things. If you believe the industry scuttlebutt - that one of our competitors has turned on us in order to grow their own market share - then that is very disappointing.''

Mark Hawthorne is a senior editor of The Age. Paul Gorman is night editor of The Press in New Zealand and former science editor.