Changes to milk quality penalties on hold for now

Thursday, April 30, 2015

by SUSAN MANN

Dairy Farmers of Ontario’s board has deferred a decision in implementing a new way to calculate milk quality penalties until after it holds additional consultations with its dairy producer committees later this year or early next year.

The new penalty calculation method for test results exceeding somatic cell count regulatory threshold levels (400,000 cells per millilitre) and bacteria levels (121,000 individual bacteria cells per millilitre) is based on a demerit system. It’s being developed by representatives from all of the Eastern Canadian provinces participating in the all-milk pooling agreement (called the P5) – Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island. Provinces have until November 2019 to implement the new system.

Ontario has been using a demerit system for its bacteria penalty program since 2010 when it switched to weekly bacteria testing, says George MacNaughton, Dairy Farmers operations director. “What we found is producers like it.”

Dairy Farmers officials outlined details of the demerit system at this year’s spring policy conference held in March in Alliston. A fact sheet on the system was also distributed at this year’s Dairy Farmers annual meeting in Toronto in January.

MacNaughton what they’re looking to do is have the same “obligations and consequences” for all farmers in the P5 provinces.  The P5 quality harmonization committee decided the demerit system “is both effective and easy for producers to calculate and understand.”

It’s a lot like the driver’s license “where you can’t exceed a certain threshold,” he says.

The demerit system fact sheet says a demerit is applied each time a test result is over the regulatory threshold of 400,000 somatic cells per millilitre or 121,000 individual bacteria cells per millilitre. Under the new system, a penalty will be assessed when a demerit is applied to at least one test result in the current month and at least 40 per cent of all test results in the current month plus two previous months.

For farmers, the change in the penalty calculation method means every test will count and there will never be a time when it doesn’t matter if test results are greater than the regulatory standard, the fact sheet says. Currently “you can essentially have two months where you don’t really have to pay a whole lot of attention to what the test results are,” MacNaughton notes.  Under the new system, “we think it changes how people will manage the somatic cell count and it will bring more attention to each bulk tank value.”

In Ontario, 6.4 per cent of somatic cell count test results in 2014 were equal to or greater than the regulatory standard of 400,000 somatic cells per millilitre.

Cows produce somatic cells to combat intramammary bacterial infections, called mastitis. High levels of somatic cells in milk indicate abnormal, reduced quality milk. Milk from healthy cows will have somatic cell count results of less than 150,000 cells per millilitre, according to a Dairy Farmers raw milk quality program booklet. BF