Proper hygenic and environmental practices in dairy farms - TvAgro by Juan Gonzalo Angel

Twitter @juangangel
Attention to hygiene will ensure high quality milk produced from healthy animals High quality raw milk for a satisfactory economical gain - is directly linked to healthy animals

Maintaining a high standard of hygiene is one of today’s most important milk production objectives. The hygiene level directly influences the production’s economical result and dairies are enforcing this by steadily raising their quality requirements for raw milk. More importantly though, consumers are concerned about the safety of dairy products and the conditions under which these are produced. It is therefore critically important to ensure high quality raw milk can be produced from healthy animals under good hygienic conditions and that control measures are applied to protect human health.
FROM COW TO CONSUMER

Legal requirements for safety, quality and production conditions are currently enforced in many countries. European (EU) directives (89/362/EEC and 92/46/EEC) specify that raw milk must come from healthy animals and infectious diseases or foreign substances that are communicable to human beings through milk, should not endanger human health. Furthermore the equipment, tools and conditions under which milk is produced must fulfil certain minimum requirements. Milk’s content must also meet specified hygienic standards in terms of bacterial and somatic cell numbers present.

New EU regulations are in preparation to replace the aforementioned and to cover foodstuffs in general through the whole chain, from primary production to the consumer. Another reason for such regulations is to facilitate trade of milk and dairy products.

In accordance with legislation and driven by demands for efficient production of high quality products with trace-ability - dairies are now increasingly placing stronger demands on the quality of raw milk. New schemes are being successively introduced with stronger demands for differential payment of milk according to its quality. High somatic cell counts and residuals are strongly emphasised within these schemes. Additionally, the frequency of collecting bulk milk samples for analyses is increasing to meet rising safety, quality and trace-ability demands.

Consequently, it is extremely important for the milk producer to assure the best hygiene within production. Producing consistently high quality raw milk for a satisfactory economical gain - is directly linked to healthy animals and low veterinary treatment costs.
FROM FEED TO BULK MILK TANK

The final quality of dairy products offered to the consumer, is determined by characteristics of the whole process - from the animal’s feed production to the consumer’s table.
Barn environments
Cotton towels were found to be superior to paper towels for reducing bacterial and spore counts in milk. Cleaning for 20 seconds was shown to be 50 per cent more efficient than cleaning for six seconds. One towel should be used per cow per milking. Cotton towels should be cleaned between milking sessions - preferably in a washing machine. Results from studies with the DeLaval Voluntary Milking System (VMS ) - show that automatic teat cleaning using the system’s specific teat-cleaning device, removes almost all spores from the teats.
Source http://www.milkproduction.com/Library...

Juan Gonzalo Angel
www.tvagro.tv