Cow Milk Handling Practices and Factors Contributing to Quality Deterioration in Ethiopia

Abstract

Milk, being a wholesome food with high nutritive value is often prone to early contamination and spoilage if not handled properly. Most losses of dairy products occur as a result of a combination of poor production and /or handling practices and lack of technical knowledge. Among others, lack of knowledge on clean milk production, use of unclean milking equipment coupled with lack of potable water for cleaning purpose probably contributed to the poor hygienic quality of dairy products produced in Ethiopia. The basic consideration during milk handling practices are: Housing and cleaning practices, milking practices, Milking Equipment and Milk hygienic practices. Factors that will contributes to the quality deteriorations of raw milk are Physical, chemical and biological contaminations. In addition to this the way identifying whether  milks deteriorate or not by using various techniques such as Methylene blue reduction and resazurine reduction, Alcohol test, Standard plate count, Somatic cell count and etc. Other methods of milk quality tests are: - Organoleptic test, Clot-on-boiling test, Lactometer test. Losses of dairy products occur as a result of a combination of poor production and /or handling practices and lack of technical knowledge. In order to prevent raw milk deterioration, training and awareness creation should be given to all farm communities concerning on  milk handling, personal hygienic , use of equipments, storage and transportation of milk. This paper cover milk handling practice in detail, factors that will contributes to deterioration and ways testing and method of controlling raw milk deterioration

Keywords: milk handling, milk quality, milk deterioration