Survey results: little to no drugs in milk

The results of sampling milk for drug residues from nearly 2,000 U.S. farms in 2012 have been released. The good news is that more than 99 percent of the samples are free of drug residues of concern, which the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said underscores the safety of the U.S. milk supply.
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The study looked at whether dairy farms with previous drug-residue violations — violations in tissue derived from dairy cows or market-bound meat — were more likely than other dairy farmers to have drug residues in milk, in violation of milk-safety regulations. Milk was sampled from two groups – 953 samples from “targeted” farms with previous tissue-residue violations and 959 samples from a randomly selected control group of farms.
Results show that the occurrence of drug residues in milk is low in both groups. The FDA’s report found 15 confirmed positive samples out of 1,912 tested, or 0.7 percent. There was no statistically significant difference in the results when comparing the target farm group with the random samples. The limited number of residues that were detected involved drugs not included in routine testing under the government’s current milk-safety program. Each milk sample was tested for 31 pharmaceutical compounds.
“(These results) prove that America’s dairy farmers are delivering on our commitment to providing safe and wholesome milk to consumers, while working closely with state and federal regulators to continually improve the safety of our products,” said Jim Mulhern, president and CEO of the National Milk Producers Federation. “Dairy farmers have a strong track record of compliance with state and federal milk safety regulations, and we support education and enforcement efforts to further strengthen that record.”
Producers belonging to National Milk’s member-cooperatives produce the majority of the U.S. milk supply. National Milk is the voice on Capitol Hill and with government agencies of more than 32,000 dairy producers.
Mulhern stated that the residue testing was conducted on raw milk from the farm – not on milk that had gone through the protocols in place further down the processing chain. Those protocols are designed to keep antibiotics out of the milk supply. He said this was not an analysis of processed, retail-bound dairy products that reached consumers. The FDA conducts about 40,000 separate antibiotic-residue tests of retail-ready dairy products annually, and has detected zero positives in the past four years, according to National Milk.
Nevertheless, Mulhern said there’s still need for continued education among farmers, veterinarians and pharmaceutical companies on how to prevent trace levels of residues in the future.
The FDA and state agencies partner to monitor the milk supply for drug residues. The Pasteurized Milk Ordinance is a model ordinance for states to adopt. The ordinance requires a milk sample to be collected every time raw milk is picked up at the farm. A sample is also taken when a truckload or bulk tank of milk arrives at a Grade A dairy plant for processing. Each arriving truckload must be tested for the presence of at least four of six specific Beta-lactam drugs – penicillin, ampicillin, amoxicillin, cloxacillin, cephapirin and ceftiofur. If the bulk milk sample shows questionable results, each farm that supplied milk for that truckload will undergo mandatory testing. Bulk-tank samples collected at the farm level are typically only tested if the bulk tank of milk that arrives at the processing plant tests positive for drug residues.
The goal of the study was to help the FDA prioritize its future testing efforts rather than to conduct regulatory action. Therefore this surveillance sampling assignment was blinded, meaning samples were not marked with farm names. It is not possible to trace those samples to any dairy farm, laboratory or region of the country.
The FDA said it will work closely with state regulators to consider modifying testing. The change would include collecting samples as necessary from bulk tanks on farms when investigating illegal drug residues in tissues from cull cows. That’s something investigators don’t typically do now. The agency is also working with its milk regulatory partners to update the existing milk-safety program to include testing for a greater diversity of drugs. The FDA wants to educate producers on best practices to avoid drug residues in both tissues and milk.
 
 
Source: Agriview
 

Mirá También

Así lo expresó Domingo Possetto, secretario de la seccional Rafaela, quien además, afirmó que a los productores «habitualmente los ignoran los gobiernos». Además, reconoció la labor de los empresarios de las firmas locales y aseguró que están «esperanzados» con la negociación entre SanCor y Adecoagro.

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