Assuring Quality Raw Milk

Pleasant Meadow Creamery works hard to ensure we are producing consistently high-quality, low risk, nutrient dense raw milk from pastured A2A2 Guernsey cows.

Idaho Raw Milk in the News

Have you noticed in the last twelve months that raw milk has been in the news in Idaho?

The way it has worked is that a DHW government-paid actor will produce a press release, typically implicating raw milk in health “outbreaks” without any specificity and at best only correlative evidence. AI seems to pick up the story instantaneously online and propagates it seemingly to every news agency in the state and country.

Fortunately, raw milk drinkers seem to be more sophisticated than the general public when it comes to assessing food safety risks and human health from food, and typically aren’t easily fooled by these taxpayer money-wasting “press releases” from DHW.

Standards and Risk

Modern milking systems allow us to produce a very clean product from very clean cows.

At Pleasant Meadow Creamery, when a cow first calves, the first five days of her production goes into what we call bucket milkers that divert the milk from that cow and keep it from going into the milking pipeline where it would end up in the bulk cooling tank for bottling and human consumption.

This bucket-diverted milk is used to feed calves because it is “transition” milk, typically containing a dwindling amount of colostrum and high-fat components as the days progress from the calving event.

Before allowing this milk to go into the pipeline after the tenth milking of the cow (day 5), we test her milk for coliforms and total bacteria to make sure she is “clean”. Only after she passes that test do we remove the leg band that tells the milking person to allow her into the pipeline.

The Milking Process and Quality Control

We milk in a sealed vacuum environment from teats that have been dipped in 1% iodine/glycerin compound and have been thoroughly wiped clean and dried with single use paper towels. Rubber teat inflations are attached to the four teats and milk goes through a silicon hose to a stainless steel pipe and into a stainless steel receiver tank.

All pipes are stainless steel and all gaskets are silicon or rubber. All gaskets are maintained in excellent condition with regular inspection.

Once milk in the receiver tank reaches a certain level, a pump, with stainless steel housing and impeller pumps the milk up out of the tank, through a stainless steel pipeline, through an inline filter, and into the stainless steel bulk cooling tank.

Milk arrives in that tank at 101 degrees F and gets cooled within an hour to just above 32 degrees F. We have a 7 day chart recorder that plots that temperature of the tank to ensure this cooling is happening in a timely manner.

Here is what that chart looks like. The high temps shown are when the tank is empty. Really high spikes are when the tank gets cleaned after a bottling. The smaller spikes at around 8 AM and 6 PM are when milking is happening and warm milk is entering the tank. Notice the temperature of the tank throughout the day and night never goes above 35 degrees.

Cleaning the System

After milking, there is a well-researched process for cleaning the entire piping, tank, and milking system. It is what we call a clean-in-place (CIP) system.

The process starts by hanging the milking units in the parlor and attaching them to the wash line jetters. Valves are set in the pipeline to create slugs of wash water, and another valve is opened for an air injector, which also helps to create slugs. Slugs are balls of wash or rinse water that ensure all surfaces of the pipe are cleaned.

The filter and pipeline going to the milk bulk cooling tank is removed, and other piping parts are installed to direct the line coming from the milk parlor to the wash basin.

A stainless steel wash basin is then filled with 100 degree F rinse water. When it is filled to proper level, the water off and the vacuum pump is started. Water is drawn out of the basin, through the wash lines, down into the milking units, and into the milking pipeline to the receiver tank. Level control, just like during milking, causes the pump to intermittently turn on and pump rinse and wash water to the wash basin.

After 5 to 8 minutes, we turn off the system and drain it.

Next, we use 145 degree F water with pipeline detergent. Once the basin is filled with this, the system is turned on and we run it for about 8 minutes until the water is down to about 122 degrees F, and then we turn it off and drain.

The final step is we do a rinse with 100 degree F water with low acid added. This helps to clear all detergent from the system and neutralizes the pH. This helps the gaskets and other rubber parts to last without cracking. It thoroughly eliminates chemical residue from the detergent process so that future milkings are not affected by the cleaning chemicals.

Bottling

When we bottle milk or cream, we use glass bottles that have been returned to the stores. These bottles go through a thorough rinse, including brush rinse as necessary, and then go through a bottle wash machine that uses the same detergent and low acid as the pipeline cleaning. The final step is the bottles are rinsed with 195 degree F water that sanitizes them.

At bottling time, milk is agitated so all the cream mixes back in, and is pumped from the bulk cooling tank through silicon lines, using a stainless steel pump housing and impeller, to a stainless steel bottling vat.

The bottles are individually pushed by a stainless steel pusher to a stainless steel lifter that compress the mouth of the bottle to a silicon and stainless steel filler on the bottom of the vat, and the bottle comes down and is automatically capped with single use plastic tamper evident caps.

The filled and capped bottles are packed into crates and are immediately loaded into a refrigerated van for delivery to stores or meet and greet (Moscow and Lewiston). The van refrigerated compartment is set to 35 degrees F. While the van is parked at the bottling plant, it uses power from the building to run the refrigeration unit. When on the road, it has a road refrigeration compressor that runs.

On-Farm Lab Testing of Every Bottling Batch

The design of the system is good. However, any good quality system must have a level of verification and assurance.

We verify that we are producing high quality low risk raw milk through lab testing of every bottling batch.

The Pasteurized Milk Ordinance (PMO) states that milk going to pasteurization must contain no more than 20,000 colony forming units (cfu) per mL of raw milk in a standard plate count test. Standard plate count (SPC) is a method of incubating and counting all bacteria present in a milk sample.

The PMO states the standard for coliform bacteria, which is called the Coliform Count (CC) test, is no more than 10 cfu/mL coliform bacteria in a raw milk sample going to pasteurization. It’s to important to note that coliform bacteria are present everywhere in the environment and are not necessarily pathogenic.

At Pleasant Meadow Creamery, we use the much lower allowed SPC numbers propagated by the Raw Milk Institute. Their standard is no more than 5,000 cfu/mL of raw milk for SPC. Their CC standard is the same as the Idaho PMO at 10 cfu/mL coliform bacteria.

Depending on the month, we bottle anywhere between 16 and 20 times per month. This means we have test results between 16 and 20 per month. We monitor each test but also keep track of our averages.

Here are our test plates from yesterday, interpreted this morning. After putting the samples on the plate, we incubate for 24 hours. The CC in this sample, which is the reddish plate, is zero, which is typical for us. Our averages are usually less than 1 cfu/mL, and the SPC on this plate is 600 cfu/mL. Our average tends to run just below 500 in any given month. Recall the allowable Raw Milk Institute standard is 5,000, and the PMO allows 20,000.

Why this Matters

We know individuals and families in North Idaho are looking for food that brings vitality and health. We know older people, pregnant women, younger people, and even children are drinking and enjoying the amazing A2A2 Guernsey milk in glass bottles that we produce.

We started this dairy back in the day when nobody was producing raw milk for sale in North Idaho. This is why we bought our own family cow. We decided, as a family, that raw unpasteurized milk from healthy, grass-fed cows, is nature’s almost perfect food. A gift from God.

As we grew, we knew we wanted you, the consumer, to have the best tasting milk, with the best shelf-life, and the best texture and nutrition you could possibly get from this nearly perfect food. So, as time has gone on, we study this subject. Can raw milk be produced, bottled, and distributed in such a way that it is very low-risk for disease, and very high in nutrition. With modern refrigeration, milking equipment, testing, and more, we think the answer is yes.