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Dairy Farmers of Ontario and CanWest DHI ponder amalgamating milk testing With herds shrinking and the cow population slowly decreasing, industry is looking at ways of reducing the ever-growing cost of milk testing in the province by DON STONEMAN Testing means everything to the Ontario dairy industry. Farmers need a milk test to get paid. Dairy Farmers of Ontario (DFO) needs a test to bill processors. Testing is essential for milk safety and dairy farm nutrition management. And milk testing is in flux. At the University of Guelph's laboratory on Stone Road, a sample from the bulk tank on every one of Ontario's 5,000 dairy farms is tested four times a month for composition so that farmers can get paid for the varying amounts of butterfat and protein. Bulk trucks delivering milk to plants are tested for billing purposes. Farmers need to have their milk tested to ensure that butterfat and protein ratios in individual herds are on track so that they can manage nutrition. Testing verifies that on-farm milk handling and storage systems are working correctly. Provincial regulations stipulate that milk be tested monthly for somatic cell count, bacteria, freezing point test (a test for milk adulteration) and inhibitors. Finally, testing indicates the state of a cow's udder health and is a means of troubleshooting where udder health is in doubt. As far as DFO is concerned, testing has gone downhill. Refrigeration failure causing loss of a sample has been a huge issue since a new laboratory management system came into place in November 2004. A year later, it still isn't satisfactory and DFO wants the Ontario agriculture ministry to re-negotiate its contract to test milk with the university. One of the options that both DFO and the Ontario Dairy Council favour is an amalgamation of testing services with CanWest DHI. Not much more than a snowball's throw away from the University of Guelph's lab, CanWest DHI's laboratory at 150 Research Lane tests two million samples annually for dairy herd improvement programs in the province. DFO may benefit more from an amalgamation than CanWest. General manager Neil Petreny says CanWest's business in Ontario is stable. CanWest test numbers are based on cows, not herds, and cow numbers are holding at about 400,000 and decreasing slowly as individual cows become more productive and milk demand remains stagnant. DFO and the University of Guelph's lab, on the other hand, face a five per cent decline in bulk tank testing numbers every year as the number of herds shrink and the cost of sampling goes up. It's now about $4 a sample with transportation of fresh samples to the lab taking up much of the cost. When the last contract was signed with the lab, there were 7,000 dairy herds in Ontario and now there are 5,000, says George MacNaughton, DFO's farm policies and field services manager. The university lab tests 350,000 samples a year for composition and quality and 5-10,000 a year for quality trouble-shooting. Compared to what DHI does, "it is not a lot of throughput," MacNaughton admits, but the needs are different. CanWest DHI tests preserved samples of milk, which can be sent to the lab by courier, while the university's lab tests fresh milk that must be refrigerated. Preserved milk doesn't serve all of DFO's testing needs, MacNaughton says. While DFO stands to benefit more from an amalgamation, CanWest is still interested, Petreny says. "We need to find the most cost-effective way to serve the industry," he says. "If there is any opportunity to integrate operations and save the industry money, we would be open to that," Petreny told Better Farming. MacNaughton says it is too early to say who would run an amalgamated lab. The shrinking number of herds is a problem for milk testing world-wide, MacNaughton says. The Netherlands has put the two systems together and DFO is examining how that was done. He admits that amalgamation "may not be a solution" to the current problems with the testing that farmers now face. DFO doesn't need to go as far as Holland to find out how to amalgamate systems. CanWest's laboratories in British Columbia and Alberta sample for both composition and for individual cow improvement purposes, Petreny says. Each of the labs handles about one million samples a year. BF © copyright 2006AgMedia Inc.. top back