Milk is natural and essential food for human being worldwide. The adulteration and contamination in milk are rampant in India and it is facing shortage of milk. More especially clean, hygienic & quality milk is not at all available, further more certified organic cow’s fat free milk. To meet growing demand, the touts are coming up with spurious/synthetic milk. Some fraudulent milk handlers are caught for deliberately contaminating milk with low quality, cheap, non-edible, toxic substances. Consumption of such white substance with the name of milk/milk products is dangerous to the life of human being.

Water, salt, sugar, wheat flour, ground rice, blotting paper, baking soda, washing soda, caustic soda, urea, hydrogen peroxide, formalin are common adulterants used in milk. Apart from that It is general tendency of the milking animal owners to inject stimulus chemicals into the body of cattle in order to fetch more milk. The milk so contaminated with stimulus chemicals may hazardous to health.

The milk secreted into an uninfected cow's udder is sterile. Invariably it becomes contaminated during milking, cooling and storage, and milk is an excellent medium for bacteria, yeasts and moulds that are the common contaminants. Their rapid growth, particularly at high ambient temperatures can cause marked deterioration, spoiling the milk for liquid consumption or manufacture into dairy products. This can be avoided by adopting the simple, basic rules of clean milk production.

Possible reasons of contamination

in India the organized sector carries out only procurement and processing and marketing/distribution of milk. In fact, in India "dairying" means only procurement & processing and marketing /distribution of milk. The most critical functions of dairying viz. animal rearing and milk production are carried out by un-organized farmers.

80% of milk comes from small, even marginal farmers, who own a single head of cattle In India, there is no trustworthy cattle market, no honest cattle traders nor any reliable dairy animals. Simply because, absolutely no records whatsoever are maintained by anyone about the animals; be it pedigree, yield or any other matter.

The possible reasons for such a high bacteria count of raw milk could be attributed to -

• Absence of cleanliness and hygienic conditions of animal housing, animals, milkmen, milking utensils/equipments, animal health
• Indefinite delay (5 to 10 hours) in chilling and processing of raw milk
• Farmers still consider cattle rearing as a supplementary activity to farming
• Do not look at dairying as an independent profession.
• Primitive Animal Husbandry norms practiced.
• Not only the milk producers, but also some veterinarians themselves do not know the basic information related to animals, i.e. average weight of adult animals, their daily feed ration requirement, accurate lactation yield, daily quantity of cow manure, etc.

Other sources of contamination

Under normal grazing conditions, cows' udders will appear clean and therefore washing and drying will be unnecessary. Otherwise, any visible dirt must be removed using clean, running water, individual paper towels or cloths in clean water to which a disinfectant has been added (eg. sodium hypochlorite at 300 ppm). If udder cloths are used, provide a clean cloth for each cow. After each milking, wash and disinfect them and hang up to dry. Disposable paper towels are preferable and more effective for drying after washing. When cows are housed or graze in heavily stocked paddocks, external udder surfaces are usually grossly contaminated with bacteria even when they appear visibly clean, therefore routine udder preparation procedures should be followed. Whenever udders are washed they should be dried.

Fore milking has little affect on the total bacterial count of the milk but is an effective way of detecting clinical symptoms of mastitis. Filtering or straining the milk removes visible dirt but not the bacteria in the milk because they pass through the filter. Aerial contamination of milk by bacteria is insignificant under normal production conditions.

The milk contact surfaces of milking and cooling equipment are a main source of milk contamination and frequently the principal cause of consistently high bacterial counts. Simple, inexpensive cleaning and disinfecting routines can virtually eliminate this source of contamination.