Raw Milk Quality

Did you know that in the state of Idaho, the only requirement for selling raw milk to the public is that the cows be annually disease tested for tuberculosis and brucellosis?

Otherwise, there are literally no standards at all. No standards for facilities, no standards for cleanliness, and no standards for testing.

On the one hand, this is the very essence of freedom and liberty, and on the other hand, raw milk is a food product that needs to have protocols in place to produce it cleanly and safely.

There is a raw milk industry organization called the Raw Milk Institute (https://www.rawmilkinstitute.org/) which has developed standards and protocols for raw milk producers in order to educate them on practices that ensure they can safely and cleanly produce a quality product. Perhaps this private industry entity is the way to go for things like food safety?

Pleasant Meadow Creamery was founded in 2013 and we became a larger dairy at a time where our state did have standards and inspections, so our facility has previously been inspected and passed as a grade A dairy facility. We no longer enjoy the benefit of an inspector coming through every so often, but we still work daily to maintain the standards of a grade A facility.

In addition to maintaining a clean grade A facility, there are two things that we do to ensure a good product: daily bacterial lab testing of the product (which we do in our on-farm lab), and we monitor temperatures of product at our stores.

The two bacteria tests we do are standard plate count and coliform count. Standard plate count is a count of all bacteria present in a given sample and coliform count is looking specifically for coliform bacteria.

It has been demonstrated and is generally accepted that these two tests are the best tests to determine whether a food product is being produced cleanly.

We take samples directly from our bulk cooling tank every morning and incubate them for 24 hours. We then examine them and record the count of any colony forming units present in order to ensure we are meeting and exceeding the standards set forth by the Raw Milk Institute.

We also use an infrared thermometer to occasionally check temperatures of product in walk in coolers and display cases at stores throughout the year, but especially in the summer.

The reason we take temperatures at stores is because refrigerators and coolers above 40 degrees Fahrenheit allow raw milk to naturally ferment ultimately shortening its shelf life due to the production of lactic acid (which will smell sour). A sour product is not a rotten product, and can still be used for stuff, but its not what you want if you were looking to enjoy a glass of sweet and cold Guernsey Goodness.

One way you can ensure our product lasts as long as possible after you purchase it is to be sure you always store it below 40 degrees F. This means transporting it from the store either in a refrigerated goods bag or otherwise getting it home as soon as possible, and then storing it in your refrigerator in the coldest spot of the fridge. It is recommended that you never store raw milk in the door of the fridge, which tends to run warmer with constant opening and closing.

Photo credit: 3M Standard Plate Count result. Each dot on the grids represents a colony forming unit. The sample is diluted 1 mL of milk to 99 mL of buffered water. To read the result, we count the dots and multiply by 100. This sample has an aerobic bacteria count of 16 x 100 = 1,600 cfu/mL. The Raw Milk Institute standard is a rolling three-month average of less than 5,000 cfu/mL raw milk. The standard for coliforms, which is a different “plate”, is a rolling three-month average of less than 10 coliforms per ml raw milk.