Saturday, March 30, 2024

New rules for raw milk

Avatar photo
A new raw drinking milk policy provides rules for farmers producing the product and Village Milk partner Richard Houston says it’s a step in the right direction, but leaves room for improvement.
Reading Time: 2 minutes

He welcomed the Ministry for Primary Industries policy that followed a review of the industry, but said MPI’s “hands-free supervision” approach relied on inexperienced people making decisions on aspects of microbiology.

The new policy will be introduced on March 1 next year. The current law restricts sales of raw milk from a farm to five litres per day per customer, but the new policy had no limit on the amount farmers could sell to an individual or the amount they could sell overall. But it would develop specific production requirements that all farmers selling raw milk would have to meet.

Each farmer would have to follow a regulated control scheme (RCS) under the Animal Products Act that would include keeping records, testing raw milk and being verified (checked). Each farm would need to be verified by a recognised person, have a veterinarian inspection of milking animals, an assessment of the bottling and packaging operation, and hygiene indicator and pathogen testing of the milk, with records kept of those tests.

Non-compliance could lead to suspension or deregistration of the operation and prosecution, while failure to comply with sale requirements could also attract penalties under the Food Act.

An MPI spokesperson said the number of times a farmer would need to be verified would depend on how well they were managing the food safety risks. That meant good performers would be verified less, and poor performers more frequently. MPI is still working through the finer details of the requirements.

Village Milk had been producing and testing raw drinking milk for five years and Houston said some farmers would find the new rules challenging without guidance. The business was set up by the Houston family in Golden Bay, who franchised the concept and now had six franchisees around the country. It included milk testing procedures to monitor the milk quality from each franchisee.

However, the franchises would no longer continue because the risk management programme for raw milk governing them would no longer be allowed once the RCS was introduced.

“The RCS is a prescriptive policy and it’s a good, positive step by MPI. They’re not getting rid of raw drinking milk and we’re grateful they’re making rules to regulate this activity.

“Producers will be responsible for themselves and they will need to conform with the rules and have the customers’ wellbeing at heart.

“We know ourselves with the franchises that it’s quite a challenge keeping everyone’s milk at a high standard and it’s really good having help and guidance,” he said. 

“For some, these new rules will be a daunting process.”

Houston said Village Milk had more than five years experience with evolving milking procedures and knowledge gained from weekly milk testing results to the point their raw milk now had a lower bacteria count than pasteurised milk tested from the shop shelf.

He wanted the Government to take a serious look at research and development for the raw drinking milk industry.

“We said to the Government, it’s really good you’ve got this policy, but what else are you going to do about it. We don’t have the funding to do the research.”

Much of the research in the past had been slanted to the risk of raw milk rather than the health benefits, he said.

“Raw milk is an amazing product. What we see as a supplier are the families that would be devastated without raw milk. Like when you talk to a mother whose child’s asthma clears up, or the old man who no longer has to take all those nasty tablets. We need an open-minded approach to research.”

Total
0
Shares
People are also reading