Why State wants you to drink safe milk

The government is doing a campaign to promote safe production and consumption of milk.

The campaign came up due to the continuing prevalence of dangerous mycotoxins, the most common aflatoxin in food and dairy.

The initiative advocates best practices in the entire value chain from the farm to the table.

Livestock PS Jonathan Mueke spoke to the Star on the significance of this undertaking. 

Why are we having this conversation about milk safety now?

This conversation has been ongoing. It's just one of the ways we create awareness to ensure our citizens always consume safe milk. Safe milk is important for us.

For children, it provides calcium that strengthens the bones and the teeth and helps the growth of the kids. It also has potassium that really gives you the muscle strength. And milk generally is good for our health. So it is very important that the milk that we consume is safe for human consumption and doesn't pass diseases on to our citizens.

And so how are we making this possible? How are we collaborating with the dairy farmers, the processors, the retailers to ensure that the milk out there is safe?

We are doing a lot of awareness, a lot of capacity building. We have the Kenya Dairy Board, and we go out to the farms. We have Farmer Field Days, where we interact with farmers, and we teach them how to produce safe milk.

We teach them safe milking practices, such as thoroughly washing their hands before milking. Number two, the containers that they're putting the milk in should always be clean, washed with soap and water. Where possible, use stainless steel containers. Many farmers use plastic containers, but sometimes the bacteria from yesterday's milk or the day before can get stuck in the plastic. And even if you wash, the bacteria still remains and that contaminates the milk.

Only about 35 per cent of our milk is processed, 65 per cent is hawked from the cow to the hotel, local school or local hospital.

We're really discouraging that. Most farmers don't have the means to test milk when it comes straight from the cow.

That's why it's important to sell your milk to the cooperative that sells your milk to the processor like KCC or Bio Foods or whatever processor near you. They are able to test milk for aflatoxin, bacteria and ensure that your milk is not adulterated with chemicals to make it last longer, or with water that dilutes the nutrients of the milk.

You’re right that many times Kenyans don't wash their hands. You can standing at the bathroom watch people coming out without washing their hands. So it's prudent farmers use formal structures.

Yes, because that creates the checks and balances to ensure that if the farmer has not done the hygiene properly, once they sell it to the processor or their local cooperative, they have milk testing machines, called lactometers, that can check the safety of the milk.  

If it is not safe, then it gets rejected. And because farmers know if they don't produce safe milk, it won't be bought, they begin to follow the hygiene practices.

There are supermarkets with milk dispensers. How safe is that milk?

That milk dispenser dispenses safe milk because we have very clear regulations on how to handle such milk. The supermarkets test the milk when it comes from the farmers. They do some sort of processing to ensure it is safe.

But we don't leave it at that. We do surveillance, and we do spot checks to the supermarkets, not just the dispensers. We even buy the milk packets and take them to our labs and test for aflatoxin, bacteria and antibiotics. If we find the milk is contaminated, we recall it and remove it from the shelves.  

Many times we have shut down outlets and we take people to court who we find selling adulterated milk. So we're very strict as government in terms of surveillance. And in terms of enforcement of safe milk.

The last statistic I saw, about 89 per cent of our milk now is safe. We’ve done tremendous strides to ensure our milk is safe. But that being said, it is across the entire value chain, from the farmer to the aggregator to the processor, to the consumer, to the retailer, to government – all of us have a role in playing in ensuring safe milk.

And that's why we run awareness campaigns through social media, through radio, through TV, through farmer field days.

Most Kenyans, as you said, buy milk directly from farmers or milk it themselves and boil. Isn’t that safe enough?

Boiling milk might reduce some of the bacterial counts. But boiling the milk will not get rid of things like aflatoxin, which comes from the animal feed that the cow ate. Aflatoxin causes stunted growth in children. It causes cancer in human beings.

So we need to ensure that any aflatoxin-laced milk doesn't even make it to the consumer; it gets discarded at source because once it's in the milk, there's no way to get rid of it. So that's why we do testing with lactometers at the point of purchase. Some of those contaminants cannot be cured by either boiling or pasteurisation.

What stops the farmers from having their lactometers to test their milk at home?

Nothing. They are expensive pieces of equipment. But if the farmer can afford those, by all means they should. We also now are updating our daily bill to ensure that we tighten the laws and regulation around milk. The act we currently have now that governs milk is from 1957. So we have come up with a Dairy Bill 2024 that is industry-led.

We brought in all the industry stakeholders to ensure that we don’t just have safe milk, but we can have enough milk for trade. We want to really expand the dairy sector, not just for local consumption but also to increase manufacturing of high-value dairy products, such as yoghurt, cheese and butter.

There are a lot of countries in Africa that don't produce milk. We can export to them and create many jobs through the dairy industry.

Actually just next week, we have the National Dairy Conference, which is on June 19-20 at Nakuru ASK show, and will be officiated by the Deputy President. We will be talking about how to expand this dairy industry, which is a priority value chain within the bottom-up economic transformation agenda.

How do you rate consumers' knowledge on milk safety?

We need to create more awareness throughout the entire value chain, especially with the consumer. So if the consumer is knowledgeable about the product, and the consumer knows that you only get safe milk if you go to the shop, the farmer who's hawking their milk without passing it through processes and making sure the milk is safe, won't get any business.

So we are also telling the consumers, watch out for your own health and for your own safety.  Buy products that are tested, that are certified as good for human consumption. And once the consumer is educated on that, and the consumer knows that you only go to buy milk at certain areas, that you don't go to the farm and buy the milk because you know the farmer has milked with dirty hands.

Or that the cow was injected yesterday with antibiotics; it's supposed to take 48 hours for it to clear but it has been milked within 24 hours. That the cow has been given bad food so aflatoxin comes through. Or that farmers did not cool the milk quick enough after milking, so the bacteria count has exponentially grown and the farmer doesn't have the instruments to test the milk – the consumer will know they shouldn’t buy such milk. They should only buy from certified outlets.

As a consumer who's reading this conversation, if I bought a packet of milk and I suspect something is off, how do I go about letting the authorities know?

The Dairy Board has officers around the entire country, just report that to them. They should be able to take action immediately. If you recall, it was highlighted in the media a few months ago we were cracking down on fake imported milk powder.

So we're working with the DCI, the NIS, National Police Service and ourselves as a Ministry of Agriculture to intercept crooks who are importing fake milk powder, turning it into milk and selling it to unsuspecting customers.