While dairy has maintained a strong presence throughout the history of human diets, its nearly universal appeal in the modern world was not inevitable. Milk—and dairy products in general—have only maintained their consumer appeal through a constant cycle of innovation in line with market demands.

Even today, we are discussing a radically different dairy landscape than the one that existed 30 years ago. Dairy, a product that was once predominantly centered around Europe and North America, has seen massive growth in production and consumption across the world, especially in Latin America and Asia. It has also seen a transformation in how it is perceived, reinventing itself as a health food to target contemporary consumer concerns and evolving to encompass plant-based milk products that extend the market “beyond the cow.”

This traditionally dynamic marketplace has only been made livelier by the COVID-19 pandemic, accelerating trends that were already underway and introducing new challenges to processors.

All of these changes and the “new normal” of the last two years during the pandemic have highlighted the need for novel and advanced testing and analysis technologies. Equipped with these, processors can adapt and seize new opportunities presented by this ever-evolving marketplace.

In this article, we will break down five key trends currently affecting the dairy industry and explore how, backed by robust testing technologies, dairy processors can best capitalize on these trends.

1. Plant-Based Products

A growing number of people, predominantly in Europe and North America, are identifying as vegan or attempting to reduce animal product consumption. This intensifying demand, paired with the novel formulation technologies that allow processors to better simulate the taste and feel of dairy products, has led to plant-based milk products commanding a growing market share.

As with any novel product, safety and quality assurance should be at the top of the agenda for any processor. While ensuring safety in all milk products is critical, it introduces some distinct challenges for plant-based offerings.

For example, plant-based milk products tend to hold more suspended particles than their animal counterparts, which can lead to processing difficulties in instrumentation originally designed for animal-based products. Plant qualities such as stickiness can lead to processing disruption and an increased need for maintenance. The suspended solids also cause issues in characterizing these products when using certain analytical techniques. The nature of these formulations means that the density of the products is not always clear, making it difficult to judge which products are fit to be used in specific instrumentation.

When analyzing a plant-based sample, we can apply what we know in traditional dairy products, where formulations higher than 30% solids require near-infrared instrumentation. Therefore, in solid-rich plant-based milk products, near-infrared is usually best suited. Alternatively, in those lower than 15% total solids, Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) liquid analyzers can test samples in less than 30 seconds and with lower than 1% coefficient of variation (CV). Furthermore, diode array-based instrumentation, which can fit directly across a belt or pipeline, can provide rapid spectra of a product sample within six seconds. And for high-detail analysis, Fourier transform near-infrared (FT-NIR) can separate wavelengths in the near-infrared range within 30 seconds.

This is an area that is rapidly growing in response to market demands, with many instrument manufacturers beginning to roll out calibrations specific to plant-based milk products.

2. Dairy Industry Testing Is Traveling Upstream

Across the broader dairy industry, testing technologies are being applied further upstream in the supply chain by processors. With more stringent global food regulations, a growing clean-label product demand, and rising competition between brands, processors are requiring or intensifying early stage and raw ingredient testing in order to have more control of product quality.

The change to upstream testing can be most clearly seen in antibiotic residue testing. Veterinary drugs, such as antibiotics, are used on farms to prevent infections and promote health in cows. To prevent antibiotic residues from accumulating upstream and seeping into dairy supplies, processors rigorously test samples to ensure compliance.

Lateral flow strip tests, for example, can be used to test throughout the dairy creation process: from field and farm to contract and in-house processing labs. This easy-to-use, accurate technology can detect a broad range of antibiotics found in cow’s milk both at or below European Union and Codex Maximum Residue Limits. Better yet, they often require almost no sample preparation and produce results within minutes.

FTIR is also being applied more widely at milk collection points. Using solutions that ensure easy installation and minimal moving parts for easy transportation, these instruments can test for both composition and untargeted adulterants.

By routinely applying these technologies, processors can more easily adhere to regulations and continue to provide consumers with safe products. They can also more confidently assure safety in their products, as well as prevent the large-scale losses incurred when contaminated ingredients are mingled with healthy supplies. As testing continues to move upstream, easy-to-use and transportable technologies such as these will be important. 

3. Intuitive Instrumentation

The food processing industry generally sees high staff turnover. With broader labor shortages across several industries, dairy processors are also seeing more intense staff shortages. The specific and lengthy training requirements within the dairy processing industry in particular means that these shortages are leading to workflow breakdowns and reduced productivity. To keep profit margins stable, processors need to embrace technologies that can help remedy these issues.

Intuitive instruments and software that delivers real-time learning can reduce training times and keep workflows optimized, even as staffs change. Through clever design, manufacturers can integrate useful features like touch screens, one-button operation, and automation to lower barriers to use for operators and scientists alike. They can also ensure that maintenance on the equipment is simple to perform, thereby minimizing downtime. These collective modifications can add up to big benefits in workflow efficiency.

4. Responding to Regulation in the Dairy Industry

A hallmark of the modern food industry is tightening regulation. Across the world, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations is driving higher standards. This, combined with greater customer expectations of ingredient transparency, means that dairy farmers, collectors, and processors need to understand their product compositions and safety profiles better than ever before. To do this, the dairy industry needs robust instrumentation that can help provide proper antibiotic, mycotoxin, and pathogen detection across a wide range of products.

By leveraging FTIR and FT-NIR systems, for example, processors can perform adulterant pass/fail screening in one minute or less; using liquid chromatography with tandem mass spectrometry (LC/MS/MS), processors can thoroughly test for antibiotics and veterinary drug residues in milk; and with inline NIR systems, they can understand their dairy powder compositions in less than 10 seconds with no sample prep.

For efficient mycotoxin testing in complex dairy matrices, processors can also use DON ELISA kits, in which the workflow is designed for users to “set it and forget it,” minimizing manual intervention and manual error. Solutions like these are also highly efficient, helping lab teams process up to 192 samples in fewer than 90 minutes.

Equipped with the latest instrumentation and assay kits, manufacturers can best inform customers as to what’s inside their products, as well as help keep them safe from any possible adulterants.

5. Data in Dairy

While testing data solutions are currently being rolled out across almost every industry, they remain generally underused in the dairy industry, offering processors an opportune chance to get ahead.

One way data solutions can help processors is through synchronization of their workflows to achieve improved efficiency. Some solutions can give access to visualizations and predictive analytics, helping to provide a more complete overview of workflows, ingredient quality, and product performance. Modern software tools can also pull out areas where workflows can be made more efficient, with the overall goal of leveraging data to help managers make more informed and faster decisions that can reduce time, cost, and waste demands while increasing product quality.

Data solutions in dairy are undoubtedly going to scale up in the future. As sensors become more sophisticated, two areas within data solutions in particular will see advancement. First, more user-specific visualizations and information will be available for processors, and second, tailored automation when leveraging data will become widespread.

Looking to the Future

As with many industries, the dairy industry is currently undergoing a period of change. Adapting to this is fundamental if the industry wants to maintain dairy’s near-global appeal as a popular, reliable, nutritional, and tasty product. From plant-based milk products to tightening regulations, there are no signs that the dynamic dairy industry is slowing down. Further, with milk becoming ever more global and differences in product demands continuing to diverge, it’s highly possible we will see an even more varied and distinct marketplace in the future.

Smart, robust testing and analysis technologies are key when trying to stay on top in the quickly changing landscape of dairy. With innovative testing and analysis solutions and best practices, processors can add new firepower to their value and quality and continue to create competitively exciting and customer-driven products to the global marketplace.

Beukema is senior manager of R&D for PerkinElmer, Inc., Food Segment. Reach him at wopke.beukema@perkinelmer.com.

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Food contamination generally depends on two major variables: how easy it is for a particular product to become contaminated and how difficult it is to discover the contamination through the testing methods in use. With milk and dairy products, the combination of these two factors make the probability of food safety incidents much higher than with other foods.

The risk starts at the very source. “Milking happens in a non-sterile environment that can harbor different pathogens,” says Dino Demirovic Holmquist, vice president of business development at Eurofins. “For bacteria to grow, you need humidity, the right temperature, and food. Milk has the perfect combination: It’s liquid, nutritious, and is drawn from the cow at a temperature between 32º and 34ºC.”

The other variable is not favorable either: Pathogens in dairy products can be difficult to detect because of their complex matrices and the interaction among different microorganisms. One of the effects of this interaction is a phenomenon called metabiosis, which happens when a microorganism creates the right conditions for the growth of another one. A typical example, says Holmquist, is a pathogen that lowers the pH in milk, creating a perfect environment for another pathogen that was already there, but in very small quantities. As this second pathogen grows, it produces a substance or other favorable conditions in which a third one can flourish and make a product unsuitable for consumption, he adds.

In fermented products, these interactions may have the opposite effect of keeping bacteria undetected when using standard plating techniques. “Fermentation often uses lactic acid bacteria,” says Luke Thevenet, a pathogen technical sales specialist at 3M. “These can produce antimicrobial compounds that compete for resources with the pathogen that you’re trying to detect, preventing it from growing.”

The same phenomenon occurs in dairy powders: “Powdered dairy is probably one of the most difficult matrices to recover pathogens from and prevent interference if using an unvalidated detection method. Their low-water-activity environment is not conducive for low numbers of pathogens to survive and grow rapidly, which affects the detection and recovery rate of molecular platforms,” says Celina To, regional technical sales manager at Hygiena.

Whether it’s metabiosis or competition between microorganisms, the result is that the pathogen is there, but invisible to standard plating methods. “You can have the best technology, but if the pathogen hasn’t grown to levels above the limit of detection, it is not going to provide valuable information,” says Thevenet.

To complicate this situation even further, dairy is one of the most dynamic segments in the food industry, with new products and formulations launched every week: “If you’re introducing new ingredients all the time, you might not have data on their pathogenic risk, their interaction with the rest of the formulation, or whether the tests you’ve been running are still valid for that new matrix,” says Thevenet.

Using an aggressive heat treatment such as ultra-high temperature (UHT) to sterilize milk in all products would not be a viable solution, says Holmquist: “Ultra-high temperatures oxidize lipids and caramelize sugars [and] will change the taste, which is the main reason we buy milk and dairy products these days. What’s more, the dairy industry has always claimed to interfere very little with milk and keep it very close to its natural state. With the clean label trend, this has become even more important.”

The Need for Speed

To be sure, plated methods are not any less valid because of these challenges. With the right strategy, the right enrichment process can always be found. For example, says Thevenet, “You might have to adjust the pH or select antibiotics to target the competing microorganisms, while promoting a positive growth environment for the pathogen.”

“Any ingredient could be problematic without any preliminary testing to validate the method for that dairy facility” says To. “Also, it’s not the type of dairy processing that create challenges; rather, these depend on whether the dairy facility has a robust and easy-to-use environmental sampling plan, where technicians are trained to look for areas that are difficult to clean and swab. This is one of the major hurdles with environmental detection.”

The real problem is time: “Heat-resistant and spore-forming bacteria like Clostridium can survive in plant-based dairy formulations, while Geobacillus stearothermophilus has been detected in extended shelf life and aseptic dairies before. Even with the right enrichment conditions, these can take up to 10 to 14 days to be detectable on plates. But many facilities can’t wait that long to hold and release products,” says To.

“Speed is crucial,” says Thevenet. “Processing environments are dynamic, and if you’re waiting several days for a result, a lot can happen: Microorganisms can be spread around processing plants by forklifts, carts, or employees.”

For dairy processors, a successful food safety program is a matter of preparation, says Thevenet: “A lot of money is invested in a product and people’s lives could potentially be at risk, so picking the right pathogen test is extremely important. You need to consider the matrix and size of the sample you’re testing, the manufacturing and lab environments, the available technical resources, and the expertise levels of your technicians. You also need the data to prove that a method is appropriate for your samples.”

A Holistic Approach to Detecting Dairy Pathogens

Because speed is crucial, detection solution providers are striving to make tests faster, either with improved enrichment media or with alternative methods. 3M has developed methods based on loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP), while Hygiena’s methods focus on ATP and DNA-Based PCR technology.

Making test execution faster will also become more important, says To: “Lab automation and optimized, reliable, and validated methods will help reduce staff turnover and allow technicians to allocate their time to other tasks, making results more reliable and repeatable. Also, with cloud-based software, a lab can quickly identify process challenges onsite and make data-driven decisions, from environmental monitoring to pathogen identification.”

Improved speed and accuracy, however, are just part of the solution. One of the most recent advancements in pathogen detection is using next generation sequencing (NGS) to look more deeply into complex food matrices: “With standard plating techniques, you have to know what to look for, while NGS can be used both for identification and characterization,” says Holmquist. “The first approach is called shotgun metagenomic sequencing, where you sequence the DNA of all microorganisms in a sample and see in what proportion they are present. The other is called targeted metagenomics, or barcoding, where you identify family genus, species, serotype, type, and strain of a known microorganism.”

Targeted metagenomics is proving very useful for tracing outbreaks of foodborne illness and can be applied successfully inside the processing plant, too. “When you find a pathogen in your plant, the challenge is to determine whether it’s a transient microorganism that comes from the outside or a persistent one,” says Holmquist. “Some of the recent recalls were based on the same pathogen that had caused a recall from the same facility several years before.”

Shifting the mindset from pathogen detection to strain tracking, says Holmquist, makes it possible to know what is really going on in a facility, instead of just sampling random points throughout the processing chain.

An important piece to this holistic approach, says Thevenet, is to integrate existing data points and technologies other than pathogen testing, such as data from raw ingredients and seasonality, to build predictive models. “This way, you would know with what product, or pathogen, or at what time of the year you’re more susceptible to having a contamination,” he adds. “For scientific vendors, the next step will be to create software that is able to track and integrate data from different platforms and make these types of predictions.”

Tolu is a freelance writer who specializes in covering the food industry. Reach him at andrea@andreatolu.com.

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The safety of dairy products relies on good farming, processing, transport, and storage practices, along with accurate screening for pathogens and drug residues. Continued advancements in dairy safety are now focused on novel techniques that use gene sequencing, metagenomics, and even image analysis and artificial intelligence (AI) to provide early warning signals of potential problems in an industry that produces one of the safest products in the country.

In 1938, milk-borne outbreaks were responsible for 25 percent of all disease outbreaks attributed to infected foods and contaminated water. By 2015, milk and fluid milk products were associated with less than 1 percent of reported outbreaks, according to the U.S. Public Health Service and FDA Grade “A” Pasteurized Milk Ordinance [PMO] 2015 Revision.

Reducing Residues

Drug residues in milk have been a concern, and sensitive and accurate analytical methods have been developed to detect and measure the presence of antibiotic residues in dairy products. Under the National Conference on Interstate Milk Shipments (NCIMS) Grade “A” program, state regulatory agencies report milk testing activities to the National Milk Drug Residue Database. In 2012, more than 3.7 million tests were reported to the database, and any milk containing illegal drug residues were not allowed to enter the human food supply.

PMO requires that a milk sample be tested from every bulk tank of raw milk collected at each farm, as well as a sample from every truckload of raw milk arriving at a dairy plant. Samples from every arriving truckload of raw milk are tested for the presence of at least four of six specific beta-lactam drugs: penicillin, ampicillin, amoxicillin, cloxacillin, cephapirin, and ceftiofur. If any test positive, raw milk samples from each farm that supplied the sample for that truckload must be tested.

In addition, the FDA Center for Veterinary Medicine conducted a Milk Drug Residue Sampling Survey, published in 2015, which analyzed raw milk samples from individual dairy farms that had been previously identified as having a drug residue violation in tissues from culled dairy cows at slaughter. These samples were compared to a control group of samples from farms that had not been identified with a previous residue violation. The milk samples were analyzed for antibiotics, non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, and an antihistamine, a total of 31 different drug residues. A positive residue was defined as being at or about 50 percent of the established safe level/tolerance.

Out of the 1,912 total samples, there were 11 confirmed positive milk samples out of 953 (1.15 percent) targeted milk samples, representing 12 confirmed drug residues in the targeted sample group. One sample contained two confirmed drug residues. Among the 959 non-targeted samples, or the control group, there were four confirmed drug residues (0.42 percent). According to the FDA Center for Veterinary Medicine report about this sampling and testing, “the small number of positives in both the targeted and non-targeted groups is encouraging and the FDA continues to be confident in the safety of the U.S. milk supply.”

Additionally, the FDA report called for strengthening the NCIMS drug residue testing program to educate dairy producers on best practices to avoid these residues in both tissue and milk; to utilize the data to, if necessary, include testing for more diverse drug classes in milk; and to consult with state milk regulatory agencies to consider (on a case-by-case basis) collecting milk samples in conjunction with investigating illegal drug residues in tissue involving cull dairy cattle.

Analyzing the Microbiome

Investigators at the University of California, Davis, are taking dairy safety another step forward by identifying the raw-milk microbes, or the level of bacterial diversity that is found in shipments of raw milk that arrive at participating processing facilities in California. The researchers sampled and analyzed milk from 899 tanker trucks on arrival and then shortly after storage at two dairy processors in California’s San Joaquin Valley during the spring, summer, and fall.

Gene sequencing was used to analyze the samples, the same method already being used to study the gut microbiome and soil, according to researcher Maria L. Marco, PhD, an associate professor in the department of food science and technology at UC Davis. “The method has been revolutionary in medicine, agriculture, and many other fields where microbes can be either beneficial or detrimental,” she says.

Using DNA sequencing, Dr. Marco and her team found that the communities of milk microbiomes are highly diverse, with a core microbiota showing distinct seasonal trends. Milk collected in the spring had the most diverse bacterial communities, with the highest total cell numbers and highest proportions of Actinobacteria. A core community of microbes was found in all the raw milk samples, with 29 different bacterial groups and high proportions of Streptococcus and Staphylococcus, as well as Costridiales. The bacterial composition of milk stored in some silos at processing plants was distinct from that in the tanker trucks.

According to Dr. Marco, the research, which was published in a 2016 issue of American Society for Microbiology’s mBio, demonstrated “how the built environment in processing plants can have significant but still unpredictable impacts on the microbial quality of foods.” There are three major ways that this research can impact the dairy industry, she notes. First, it can help identify probable contamination points in processing, such as the pieces of equipment or precise steps where contaminants enter. Second, it can shed light on effective cleaning protocols, such as when and how to clean and how much time should elapse before a piece of equipment should be cleaned again. “Contaminant bacteria can build up over time, so our work is focused on helping processors refine their cleaning procedures,” she says. And third, using DNA sequencing will help increase the ability to predict spoilage. Understanding how to predict which milk would most likely result in a defect in cheese or other dairy product can improve the treatment and handling of milk and thus ensure consistently high-quality products, Dr. Marco emphasizes.

This type of testing is not intended to replace the widely used diagnostic assays that effectively identify pathogens such as Listeria or Salmonella and Campylobacter in milk. Instead, it is an additional approach that can help identify a potential safety risk. “This has shown that we have to be mindful that frequent sampling is needed and that, by using methods we never had before, we can really monitor the equipment to keep the contaminants down,” Dr. Marco says.

Genomics Tools

Metagenomics and metatranscriptomics have moved food safety, including dairy safety, into the arena of nontargeted screening to give early warning signals of deviations that could indicate a safety issue. The use of genomics also provides a more precise method of detecting, characterizing, and identifying pathogens in foods such as milk, according to Martin Wiedmann, DVM, PhD, Gellert Family Professor in Food Safety at Cornell University. Sequencing DNA and RNA means that the microbiomes can be profiled all along the milk supply chain.

Cornell is collaborating with IBM Research as part of the Consortium for Sequencing the Food Supply Chain (the university is one of several members). The goal of the consortium is to categorize and understand microorganisms and the factors that influence their activity in a normal, safe environment, and to develop the science and the tools that can be used for analysis. Researchers at Cornell are using the university’s own approved and licensed dairy farm and processing facility as a “model system for how we can implement on a routine basis these types of tools,” Dr. Wiedmann says.

Another focus of the program is defining the baseline for “normal” raw milk, and then being able to define “abnormal” milk, he points out. “We have started developing the knowledge to detect some of these abnormalities earlier and trace them back to identifying the cause and, therefore, more effectively and more rapidly address or further characterize the abnormalities.”

One example of how these techniques can be applied has been the identification of certain bacteria that can make refrigerated, pasteurized milk in partially filled containers turn gray or be streaked with gray, as discussed in a July 2017 article in the Journal of Dairy Science. “We found that there are organisms that required oxygen to make the color compound, and we were able to identify which genes are responsible. So if you have these genes and they are expressed and they have enough oxygen, then you are going to get this defect. It was a microbial contaminant that causes the problem, not a disgruntled employee tampering with the product, as had been suspected,” Dr. Wiedmann says.

Other applications include individualized troubleshooting to identify the likely cause of a defect, such as a taste defect, so that intervention can begin to eliminate that cause. Using the tools for genomic sequencing, it is now possible to quickly take a bacterial isolate and accurately identify the microbes involved. “We want to get to the point where individual dairy processors can do this type of testing. As futuristic as it may sound, I think it is feasible that it will probably happen in three to five years in more sophisticated plants,” Dr. Wiedmann notes. Metagenomics testing is likely to supplement traditional dairy testing methods, not replace them, and will allow for more risk-based testing, he says.

U.S. dairy products are “probably some of the safest products around, and the countries where we export pay premium for U.S. dairy products because of the excellent safety record,” Dr. Wiedmann elaborates. “Anything we can do to show that we use cutting-edge tools will hopefully improve that ability for the U.S. to export some of these products.”

Image Analysis

A team of researchers at Osaka University and Rakuno Gakuen University, both in Japan, have developed a technique that uses a camera and AI to monitor lameness among dairy cows. Lameness, if untreated, can result in declining quantity and quality of dairy production. The researchers waterproofed and dustproofed a camera-based sensor capable of measuring distance to an object and set it in a cowshed. Based on the large number of cow gait images taken by the sensor, the researchers could characterize cow gaits and detect cows with lameness through machine learning.

Professor Yagi Yasushi at Osaka University says this research “will mark the start of techniques for monitoring cows using AI-powered image analysis. By showing farmers cow conditions in detail through automatic analysis of cow conditions, we can realize a new era of dairy farming in which farms can focus entirely on health management of their cows and delivering high-quality dairy products.”

Raw, Unpasteurized Milk

One dairy product that continues to be associated with disease outbreaks is raw, unpasteurized milk and cheese. The FDA does not regulate the intrastate sale or distribution of raw milk, leaving that up to each state. Thirty-one states allow consumers to purchase raw milk directly, although in many states it can only be purchased at the farm, at farmers’ markets, or through a cow-share program. Twelve states allow its purchase at retail stores. Raw milk cannot be sold across state lines or internationally. In Canada, it is illegal to sell or buy raw milk.

Research published in 2017 of the CDC’s Emerging Infectious Diseases reported that unpasteurized dairy products are responsible for almost all of the 761 illnesses and 22 hospitalizations in the U.S. that occur each year because of dairy-related outbreaks attributed to Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli, Salmonella spp., Listeria monocytogenes, and Campylobacter spp. People who consume raw milk are 838.8 times more likely to experience an illness and 45.1 times more likely to be hospitalized than people who consume pasteurized dairy products. The cause of most of these outbreaks is pathogen contamination at the dairy farm, according to the report.

Dr. Marco describes raw milk as a “microbial zoo.” The soil, gut, and aerosol bacteria found in raw milk means that it is a product “that should not be considered probiotic. It has the wrong kind of bacteria, the kind that can make you sick, particularly children and people who are immunocompromised or are recovering from an illness.”

Dr. Wiedmann grew up drinking raw milk as a child, but does so no longer. “I would not let my kids drink raw milk or my friends or pregnant friends, elderly people, or people with weakened immune conditions,” he says. “There are too many risks, and the benefits are anecdotal at best. The risks are very clear, very well described, and ironclad with regards to the science.”

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