Massey University’s Institute of Food and Nutrition head, Professor Richard Archer, who spoke at the recent Milk Quality conference in Hamilton, described a pathway of risk that lay from inside the farmgate through tanker and factory to the despatch of finished goods.
Going behind the farmgate, he referred to the dicyandiamide issue in 2012 and its detection in milk samples, albeit at low levels.
“The lesson was, never assume that some new way of doing things onfarm will have no effect on milk. That will only be proven by demonstration.”
He said analytical detection methods today were so finely tuned even “vanishingly” minute amounts of chemicals could be detected.
“Dairy companies cannot assume the development and approval processes for new agrichemicals will ensure zero contaminants in milk.
“Dairy companies will have to increase their active participation in the interface between farm practices and milk quality.”
Moving to the processing stage, changes in processing technology, staffing, training and inputs meant a different kind of bacteria and contamination risk blighted modern plants.
However, Archer was not convinced the industry’s risk management had adapted to this.
Twenty years ago bacteria in plants were thought to be of a free-floating nature. Today with vast areas of stainless processing area, the risk is known to come from biofilms of bacteria populating and coating that area.
Those sophisticated plants also had fewer staff running them and most staff wouldn’t have a complete knowledge of the plant.
That meant dairy companies relied on the plant design and process engineering put in place before the plant was built.
But the risk of a new bacterial strain entering a large plant, complicated by the addition of ingredients sourced from elsewhere, increased the complexity of trace-back when something goes wrong.
Add in NZ’s “big boy” status as an exporter and vulnerability increased, as foreign governments found internal political pressure harder to resist if product from NZ were suspect.
The industry’s risk management system has done well in the past, dealing with disease risks like listeria and salmonella.
“The product safety culture is strong. All this has meant that most plants have a superb food safety record and NZ at large has built an enviable reputation for safe product.
“But it’s a product safety culture geared to historic challenges, and steady state operation.”
This had not been helped by recent changes in how managers were trained.
Development had moved from university-based diploma training with an emphasis on preparing minds to solve unknown challenges and issues, to targeted, compact training, emphasising learning from known situations.
His concern was while highly competent in handling day to day operations, staff were under-prepared for dealing with future unknown threats.
That was also hampered by the industry’s risk management Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points.
“It’s a powerful tool, but comes from the days when bacteria were free-floating, not sticky sections of biofilm capable of sloughing off a warm section of the plant.”
Even plant design process failed to incorporate input from microbiologists who could highlight food safety risk areas at that early stage.
“Our usual practice of turnkey contracts for capital plant can isolate the client company food safety stakeholders from designers.”
He also said there was a need to revisit milk tanker design, an area that had changed little over two decades, but one demanding change as more was known about the impact of current design on milk quality.
Archer pointed to the petrochemical industry as one that had managed to adapt to managing risk better, from design to daily operations.
Following a series of disasters in the 1970s, a set of risk assessment tools was developed to predict possible scenarios, and to train staff to better cope with otherwise unknown events and deal with them. There were similar examples in the pharmaceutical sector.
“There is an immediate need for a change from reactive to proactive in the industry. It needs some people scanning the horizon for food safety hazards.
“The NZ dairy industry needs a comprehensive leap up in food safety culture and system, and that time is now.”
