Quality milk companies are paying bonuses of up to 30 per cent to farmers for milk with exceptionally high-fat content and solids and low bacteria.
Dairy company Bio Foods is spearheading quality-based milk payments by paying farmers from Sh58 to Sh65 per litre, depending on the quality of the milk. The payments are up to 17 shillings higher per litre than the current Sh48-50 buying prices.
“We give farmers bonuses based on their milk’s total plate count values. Below 100,000, we give them a two-shilling bonus a litre, and for butterfat and protein we give them another bonus,” explained Amos Maina, the quality team lead at Bio Food Products.
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Total Plate Count (TPC) refers to the number of live bacteria in milk. It is driven up by dirty milking equipment, poor udder preparation before milking, milking a cow with mastitis, and poor milk storage at the farm level as well as poor cooling at the processing stage.
The company is also working to supply select farmers with free antibiotic test kits that will test the safety and quality of their milk before they deliver it.
According to the Kenya Dairy Board, milk quality is judged on its composition, i.e., fat content and milk solids (the milk powder left after water is removed) as well as the bacterial count in milk. The higher the bacterial count the more diseases the milk carries and the faster it spoils. Judging milk on its quality rather than quantity will avoid milk being diluted and ensure that the milk produced by farmers is safe and of the highest quality.
To supply milk to Bio Foods Maina explains that farmers need to deliver extremely hygienic milk that has a less than 400,000 TPC count compared to the Kenya Bureau of Standard’s recommended two million TPC count.
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“Most of the milk we receive from our farmers has a standard 3.3 per cent total protein content while the butterfat content ranges from 3.5-4.5 per cent depending on the cow a farmer keeps,” he said. Whole milk from Friesian cows contains on average 3.6 per cent whole milk while milk from Jersey cows contains a much higher five per cent butterfat content. The company also performs hydrogen peroxide tests to ensure that no water is mixed into the milk. “We also perform aflatoxin tests on all our raw milk supplies so farmers must be keen not to store their feed in a moist area with exposure to sunlight as this promotes aflatoxin fungus in feeds which is translated into the cow and its milk,” Maina explained.
Protein and butterfat content in milk is mainly influenced by the breed of a cow and what it is fed on.
For farmers looking to supply milk to Bio Foods send an email to Jenny at consumercare@biofoods.co.ke & dairydevelopment@biofoods.co.ke respectively.