Quality milk

Major components of milk that also influences its physico-chemical quality include water (87.3%), fats (3.7%), protein (3.2%), sugar (4.8%) and the rest are other trace components.

Several tests are performed on milk upon arrival at the collection centres or processing plants.
These are organoleptic test, where milk is sniffed to detect any foreign smell apart from the smell of freshness.

This test is performed by experienced dairy technologists. Apart from the smell of spoilt milk or ‘mala’, milk can also acquire a strange smell if cows are fed on some shrubs or brewery products.

Lactometer test is used to check milk density, fresh milk density ranges from 1.026 to 1.034g/cm³. This test is done by a lactometer. Milk having a density lower than 1.026cm³ is assumed to have been adulterated with water.

To worsen the situation some go to an extra step to contaminate milk with water to make ‘huge’ profit. A few may be selling pasteurized milk from cooperatives.

The challenge here is that the consumers lack the expertise and equipment to check for milk contaminants.

The solution here is to buy milk from reputable farmers or packed milk from dairy processing factories. Pre-heated milk in this context means pasteurized milk, this is the milk in which all pathogenic and majority of spoilage microorganisms have been destroyed.

There is fermented milk, fresh milk, pasteurized milk and UHT. However, a small difference in flavor can be detected between pasteurized milk and sterilized milk because of the different heat treatment regimens applied.

The nutritional content table is a requirement on any processed food. This indicates the amount of each component of milk as a percentage or the total amount in 100ml of the milk. It is a requirement for example by the regulatory bodies that processed whole milk should have 3.5 percent milk fat.