New Milk Meter To Ensure Quality

Revealing this, animal husbandry and dairy development secretary, Ramesh Kumar, said, "These meters, which cost Rs 7 lakh apiece, have been introduced in Aurangabad, Nagpur, Pune, Beed, Nashik, Ahmednagar and Mumbai. The results are available for all to see. The daily inflow of 11.5 lakh litre of milk into Mumbai through the cooperative sector has dropped to 9.5 lakh litre."

This is expected to translate into a saving of Rs 20 crore annually for the state government that has to spend Rs 4 per litre of milk which is surplus and averaged around 1 lakh litre till the meter was introduced.

 

The surplus quantity is required to be converted into milk powder or butter and such other milk products. This process entails a cost of Rs 2.5 per litre daily, while Rs 1.5 per litre is borne towards processing loss while pasteurising the milk.

Kumar said the meter had also effectively curbed the adulteration of milk by unscrupulous operators who mixed milk powder, starch, urea and sugar along with water to increase the volume of milk being supplied to the government.

"While the lactometer used to be a volumetric method for testing milk, the density meter allows gravimetric testing of the density -- of solid non-fat (SNF) content as well as the fat content in the milk. The density meter provides a path reading that is accurate up to five decimal points while testing milk," Kumar said.

With the density meter, 20 lakh litre of milk (7.5 lakh litres from the government sector, 7.5 lakh litre from Mahananda Dairy and 5 lakh litre) that is consumed daily in Mumbai would be tested accurately for quality.

"Milk that registers a SNF level below 8.5 per cent or fat content below 3.5 per cent is not considered as milk according to Food and Drugs Administration regulations. The government milk sector pays the primary cooperatives, taluka milk unions and district milk unions according to the content of fat and SNF levels in the milk supplied to it. The higher the content of these two parameters in the milk supplied, the higher is the amount of remuneration," Kumar said.

However, with the accuracy standards rising, a lot of primary producers of milk in the state are believed to have been adversely affected and exploited by unscrupulous middlemen.

A large quantity of milk that is rejected by the government sector as sub-standard milk is being routed to the alternate market by unscrupulous elements, who acquire the same at cheap rates of Rs 2 to Rs 3 per litre.

Around 30,000 to 40,000 litre of milk is rejected at the district levels daily.