Three years in development, the rules issued by Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) allow for home delivery or farmgate sales of raw milk, subject to certain standards being met.
They included a registration process requiring all new and existing suppliers to be registered before the end of October.
The standards came as the sector weathered flak for past disease outbreaks linked to sales.
A run of gastro-intestinal disease outbreaks from raw milk sales included a significant disease outbreak in Timaru in 2014 resulting in seven people contracting campylobacter from consumption.
Food safety experts were alarmed at the disease risk and identified raw milk falling through a legislative crack, with a lack of adequate policy around farm production and supply.
New Plymouth raw milk producer Ryan Gargan started his business Beach Road Milk as the new regulations loomed in November last year.
He said any standards that tightened up the process and reduced the risk of disease outbreak would be welcome.
“We did not know when we started how far the regulations would go and were surprised to find we are able to sell as much milk to individuals as they want, compared to the old regulations that limited that to five litres.”
The new regulations laid out requirements on raw milk producers should they decide to sell their milk off the farm.
They included requiring transport operators to deliver milk under certain standards, all the while remaining the responsibility of the milk producer.
But Gargan said any moves to distribute milk to customers in New Plymouth could prove tricky under the new regulations, despite making it legally possible to do so.
Customers receiving raw milk at home had to be there to receive it and their names and sales volume had to be recorded by the producer for full traceability.
“But at least now we have a set of regulations that will work. In some countries you cannot even sell raw milk, like Victoria, Australia.”
But the changes have left a public health expert unmoved on his view of raw milk consumption.
Massey University food safety and veterinary public health Professor Nigel French said regardless the changes to raw milk regulations his advice was to not drink it.
French made his position on raw milk clear some years ago when the regulations were being reviewed.
“The bugs we are talking about are particularly nasty ones and relatively recently introduced to New Zealand.”
Resistance to these bugs in the population was less developed.
He recommended if people did choose to drink it, that it not be fed to young children and that adults heat treat it before consumption, along MPI guidelines.
Village Milk founder Mark Houston said the regulations were welcome and were almost aligned with the standards his business had established when it started in Takaka five years ago.
He was, however, concerned about the cooling standards MPI had set, which were in line with normal milk collection, requiring milk to be cooled to 6C within two hours of milking finishing.
“In our experience that is not good enough. Snap chilling needs to be done, taking it to 5C in one shot.”
He also questioned the testing frequency for high-risk diseases including listeria, campylobacter and salmonella, required once a month. Village Milk and Beach Road tested weekly for those diseases.
Houston also believed a device for measuring somatic cell counts in cows should have been made mandatory as a milk quality tool to detect mastitis.
An MPI spokesman said it was satisfied the cooling criteria for raw milk were appropriate, representing a “minimum required to achieve an acceptable outcome”.
MPI was also satisfied the parameters for testing and frequency of testing for food safety limits were sufficient and actions to be taken when milk did not conform to the requirements were specified.
They included how raw milk suppliers managed mastitis infection in milk. While onfarm methods could be used are not as good as validated lab methods for determining mastitis infections.
Farmers were also required to have a system, such as the SmartSAMMprogramme, in place to manage mastitis.
