Ponda: The Goa Dairy has claimed that it takes every measure to provide safe and pure milk to consumers. Raw milk collected from local farmers goes through four levels of processing before packaging and even milk procured from outside Goa is pasteurized. Besides this, every batch is monitored and if any deviation is found, the milk is rejected.
Goa Dairy chairman Madhav Sahakari said while local raw milk passes through four stages of processing, outside milk goes through two stages as it is already pasteurized by the supplying unit.
Milk is categorized as per milk fat and solids-not-fat (SNF). It is then pasteurized and packaged for selling.
The dairy has four variations in the market — toned milk (with 3% fat), cow milk (3.5% fat), standardized milk (4.5% fat) and full-cream or high-fat milk (6% fat).
The SNF content remains 8.5 % in first three variations and 9% in full-cream milk.
Sahakari said Rajendra Konkane, an expert in milk production from Mumbai, has been appointed to oversee the quality of milk supplied by the dairy.
Dismissing a local news channel report claiming that traces of Brucellosis disease were found in Goa Dairy's milk a couple of months ago, Konkane said such animal-borne diseases cannot survive after the pasteurization process. "Milk is heated at 78°C and no virus can survive in such high temperatures. This temperature is approved by the government as the critical control point and even the World Health Organization recommends it," Konkane said.
Sahakari said, "It's a disease developed in animals and can be passed on to humans only if raw milk is consumed." He said the dairy had sent some blood samples of infected animals to the Indian Council for Agricultural Research (ICAR), Old Goa, where a sample was found to be Brucellosis positive. The virus was not found in any milk sample as no sample was sent to the lab.
