STANDARDS TO BE FOLLOWED BY MILK PROCESSING UNITS


India is the largest producer of milk all over the world and to ensure that people are consuming safe milk and milk made products, they must be processed in a particular manner and for that FSSAI has released certain guidelines and standards that is compulsory for all the milk processing units all over India. According to FSSAI milk is a normal mammary secretion derived from complete milking of healthy milch animal.

The standards of different classes and designations of milk has been prescribed in the Food Safety and Standard regulation,2011 which stated that Milk shall conform to both the parameters for milk fat and milk solids not fat, independently, as prescribed below:

While processing milk some safety standards that must be adhered are:

1. General:

General safety standards such as Food processing operations, flow diagram and standard operating procedures shall be documented, implemented and displayed at particular operations site, Cleaning, Access to processing area by outsiders, supervision of authorized technical person And many more that are given in detail by FSSAI in guidance for milk and milk products.

2. Water treatment and management:

Proper maintenance of water treatment systems is critical to avoid the systems becoming sources of contamination, Water re-circulated or reused should be treated with no risk to safety, food product should at least meet the microbiological specifications for potable water, Water treatment systems operation and maintenance shall be defined. Methods like re-circulation, use of UV, heat and chemical sanitation can be used to minimize the risk of microbial contamination.

3. Calibration and Inspection of Measuring, Testing and process control Equipment:

All measuring, testing, process control equipment for milk processing shall be identified and labelled with their calibration status. All test equipment shall be identified with:

- Item identity / Serial No

- Calibrated / Inspected Date

- Calibration due / Inspection Due Date

4. Allergen Management:

Major Allergens are Cereals containing gluten; i.e., wheat, rye, barley, oats, spelt or their hybridized strains and products of these, to manage and control these allergens, all the allergens must be displayed at relevant places in the processing and storage areas.

MILK is a perishable product and hence needs extreme care and precautionary steps while processing it, with the help of these guiding points appropriate quality of the product that is supposed to reach to the end consumer, if any milk producing unit does not adhere with these standards it shall not be considered liable for the FSSAI license.