NYS Farm Viability Institute Awards Funding for research and education on identifying environmental sources of sporeforming bacteria
By: Tristan Zuber
The New York Farm Viability Institute recently awarded $148,598 to the Milk Quality Improvement Program and the Harvest NY Program for a project involving source identification and education on entry of sporeforming bacteria at the dairy farm level. Sporeformers are generally not evaluated by processors as quality indicators like Somatic Cell Count and Standard Plate Count, but have significant quality impacts. Additionally, low somatic cell counts or low Standard Plate Counts are not necessarily indicative of low spore counts.
Sporeforming bacteria are ubiquitous in the natural dairy farm environment and have been shown to enter the milk continuum on the farm, survive processing conditions such as pasteurization and can cause deterioration in finished product. Sporeforming bacteria include Clostridium tyrobutyricum, the causative agent of late-blowing in aged cheeses. Other sporeformers are responsible for reduced shelf life of fluid milk and dairy powders. Some export markets require dairy powders to adhere to stringent standards, which include low spore counts.
The project involves selecting NYS farms of varying management practices and sample environmental sources along with raw bulk tank milk on a quarterly basis. Sporeforming bacteria will then be identified using plating and DNA fingerprinting techniques and be correlated with respective environmental sources. Once environmental sources of contamination are identified, best management practices will be developed to reduce the transmission of sporeformers to raw milk. Regional workshops will then be held in collaboration with cooperatives and farmer-based organizations to educate the dairy production industry on control of these spore-forming bacteria that affect finished dairy product quality. The project will be completed by December 2015. This project will benefit the New York state dairy industry and dairy farmers in particular by providing the tools needed to produce raw milk with low spore counts; in the not too distant future it is likely that at least for certain raw milk uses premium prices will be paid for raw milk with low counts for certain target sporeformer
