The Rural Voice, 1983-06, Page 30dimp-
JUNE IS DAIRY MONTH
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Qdality Control in the Dairy Industry
by Bob Ferguson, Area Fieldman, Dairy
Inspection Branch
The Ontario Dairy Industry may not be
completely "alive and well" but it is
certainly "alive and striving", for im-
proved quality control!
There are some eleven thousand, four
hundred farms in the province shipping
milk through the Ontario Milk Marketing
Board; approximately eighteen per cent
of these farms are located in the four
county areas covered by The Rural Voice.
These two thousand and fifty dairy
farms are participants in what is widely
recognized as one of the most heavily
regulated segments of agriculture that
exists today. At the same time, they are
participants in a dairy industry, that
receives world wide recognition for its
high standard of quality control and its
milk composition testing program. On-
tario did not reach this standard over-
night, or at little cost to the industry. It
reached it through a combination of
leadership and funds provided by people
devoted to improving the quality of dairy
products in the Province. This leadership
came from many areas - some of which
are Ontario Dairy Council, Ontario Milk
Marketing Board, Ontario Milk Trans-
porters Association, and last but not
least, the Ontario Government.
Twenty years ago, milk plants in
Ontario did their quality testing and
reported the results back to their own
shippers. In the early sixties, the
province took steps to provide indepen-
dent government testing of all raw milk
being supplied to plants. This step
helped eliminate some of the competi-
tion problems that all plants faced; and
PG. 28 THE RURAL VOICE, JUNE 1983
much improvement was achieved in the
raw milk supply without the processing
plant having to worry about losing their
shippers to a competing plant.
The quality test used by most plants at
that time was a "reduction test". It was
an acceptable test for the time and the
price was right! It certainly separated
most of the good milk from the bad.
Dairies at that time were using a
superior, but more costly test, however
only one in four producers were shipping
milk to these fluid plants.
In the mid -sixties, raw milk quality
tests were moved out of the plants and
into Ministry of Health Labs. Besides a
bacteria test, these labs were also able to
provide a test called the milk gel index,
which provided a clue for the first time to
the producer, that there might be some
udder health problems in the herd!
Along with lab testing, came central
reporting of the results to the dairy
farmers. Soon, depending on the opera-
tion, the farmer was either eagerly, or
with some degree of trepidation, await-
ing the now familiar pink -card monthly
quality report.
The next major step in the evolution of
Ontario's raw milk quality testing, oc-
curred in March, 1970, when the province
moved to a more sophisticated, meaning-
ful bacteria test, the plate loop count.
With these results at hand, dairy farmers
were able to make major strides in
eliminating problem areas from their milk
producing and holding equipment.
The milk gel index test stayed with us
until December, 1981, when it was
replaced by the somatic cell count. Again
this is a far more meaningful test, with
high counts indicating to a farmer that
there is a herd udder health problem and
that this problem is undoubtedly costing
that farmer many dollars through lost
production income.
Producers' raw milk, besides being
tested for bacteria and total cell count, is
screened regularly for indications of
excess water in the supply. Such
accidents rarely happen. The other test
that is routinely carried out on all raw
milk is to indicate the presence of
inhibitors in the supply. It is of vital
concern to the industry that inhibitory
substances do not get into the milk
supply as they pose a manufacturing
problem to plants making cultured
products.
With co-operation from the industry at
large, Ontario has been leading the way
in attempting to eliminate inhibitor
substances from the milk supply. Many
plants, in order to protect themselves,
have embarked on a program to test every
load of milk received at their plant for the
presence of inhibitors.
Standards maintained on the majority
of dairy farms today are very high. The
Ontario Milk Marketing Board and the
Dairy Inspection Branch of the Ontario
Ministry of Agriculture and Food, for
several years now have established a
"Quality" recognition program in the
Province. This allows the local County
Milk Committees to present "Certificates
of Merit" to the producers within their
county, who exhibit outstanding quality
control throughout the year on a day to
day basis.
The standards used are the same in
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