The Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food has carried out a full audit on three of the 23 milk testing centres throughout the country and all were found to be satisfactory.
These audits announced the results for the first three months of the new regime of monitoring the testing of milk for payment purposes.
This new regime was announced by the Department of Agriculture last march and came into operation at the beginning of the new ‘milk year’ on April 1 last.
In all a total of 19 checks were carried out at 13 different test centres on the calibration of the automated equipment used in the testing of milk for butterfat, protein, and lactose content, and also for somatic cell count levels.
The butterfat content of a total of 164 samples at 15 different testing centres was cross-checked by the Gerber method and all the results were satisfactory.
Furthermore, a total of nearly 200 payment records maintained by 17 different milk purchasers were checked to ensure that the data found on testing the suppliers milk was correctly transcribed and taken into account when calculating the price which was paid to the suppliers of the milk. All these results were also satisfactory.
