Food safety
The dairy sector has a long tradition of guaranteeing and improving the quality of its products, including from a food hygiene perspective.
In the EU, consumers can drink and eat delicious and healthy dairy products with confidence knowing that the food safety system in place in the dairy chain is structured to tackle efficiently all risks that might occur in an early stage at every step of the chain, from raw milk production at the farm, collection and transport, until milk processing at the factory.
Why the system functions well
Food safety is the result of the compliance with legal requirements in terms of food and feed hygiene and of the industry’s own checks. In the dairy sector, all these requirements and principles have been in application for decades and are updated on a regular basis.
This key attention to food safety is based on the idea that during the processing, every food business operator take good care of their part of the chain to ensure a safe product “from glass to grass”.
To make this possible, the dairy industry has high quality infrastructure such as internal laboratories that do regular testing as well as trained staff.
An important element to ensure food safety is the traceability of raw materials and products across the entire chain as it allows for problems to be tackled quickly and effectively”.
Appropriate feed
Appropriate feed is the starting point in the dairy chain, and a very important one, as it contributes to good milk production and overall quality by preventing contamination of the milk. In addition, strict quality requirements apply to all water sources. At farm level, milk producers also pay special attention to hygiene on milk production holdings, animal health, prudent use of medication such as antibiotics, milk equipment, milk production and storage.
Safe transport and storage
The quality of milk is maintained to the highest standards through proper refrigeration and cooling during storage and transport.
Then, raw milk must be safely transported from the farm to the dairy factory. There, it is usually heat treated through processes like pasteurisation or sterilisation, and processed into a range of healthy and sustainable consumer products as well as into ingredients that are used by food, feed, pharmaceutical and other companies, still abiding by the highest quality and safety standards.
Clean farm, clean milk
Hygiene at milk production holdings is also crucial for safe milk. To prevent milk from being contaminated with dirt or microbes :
- the cow must be keept in good hygienic conditions;
- the dairy farm premises and equipment must be well maintained and sanitised (i.e. milking machine, milking parlour and milking robot);
- There are procedures for the disposal of manure, trash and dangerous substances to abide by.
Quality checks for food safety
The first quality check on the milk is carried out already at pickup from the dairy farm by specially trained milk tanker drivers. Raw milk is tested for antibiotic residues before processing and will not be processed if the levels exceed the legal restrictions.
Antimicrobials are necessary in special cases for treating animal diseases and therefore for safe milk – those antibiotics are only used appropriately in the dairy sector. Raw milk is tested on legal basis and more over on possible residues before processing. It will be used for dairy processing only if it is free of residues from antibiotics, according to the regulatory framework.