Dairy: about homemade and not so much

Nature has it that feeding a newborn little one should be with the best, the most nutritious, and the safest. All other options are strictly cut off by harsh evolution. Therefore, milk contains in sufficient quantity all the necessary components: proteins, carbohydrates, and fats. If sugar-loving bacteria, for example, lactobacilli, reproduce there, they form lactic acid from lactose. And this is not so bad—provided the milk came from a healthy cow, and these bacteria got there first. If, however, microbes with a predominance of proteolytic metabolism take over, besides sugar, they also eat the protein and fat. The products of their decay may be not only not very pleasant in taste or smell, but also have a pronounced toxic effect. And, of course, such proteolytics, like enterotoxic Escherichia coli or Clostridia, can keep a consumer in a hospital bed for a long time, if not in a grave.

In the first 4 hours after milking, natural antibacterial substances act in the milk—lysozyme, lactoperoxidase. Then their activity decreases and, depending on the temperature and the collection of microbes that found their way into the milk from the cow, hands, equipment, air, life in the milk begins to proliferate more or less rapidly.

A long road to the store shelf

A sensible industrial production of dairy products, in order to avoid all possible risks, strictly requires and adheres to a number of conditions. The first of them is choosing adequate milk suppliers who are not devoid of common sense and are not inclined to slip in a pig as a counterfeit or antibiotic residues. Because this is not only costly stains on reputation, but also a violation of the technological process and inevitable losses.

Mandatory veterinary control over the health of the animals, adherence to sanitary norms during milking, storage, and transportation at temperatures of 2-6°C increase the likelihood of passing the several dozen incoming milk quality tests on modern advanced facilities. Among the parameters monitored are: presence of antibiotics, pH, total microbial contamination, lactose content, fat and protein fractions which allow conclusions about possible milk falsification. If all within norms, the milk is pumped, filtered, and undergoes separation (the fat is separated for the production of cream and butter).

An interesting, important, and little-known stage is deaeration. Under low pressure, milk boils at a low temperature and excess air is removed, which is important for the technological process since it stops foaming. Also, most volatile compounds responsible for the smell are evaporated from it. That is why milk from the store does not have the same characteristic smell as homemade milk. Whether this is good or bad—one can argue, because some want the “smell of a cow,” while others are nauseated by it from childhood.

Thanks to the normalization process (adding the required amount of cream), we can talk about some standardization and have the option to choose between 0.5, 2.5, or 3.2 percent fat, because cows that produce milk with a defined fat content do not yet exist.

Homogenization is the next step. The milk is subjected to high pressure, which breaks fat into smaller droplets so it does not separate when left standing, as happens with homemade milk.

Milk undergoes mandatory thermal processing. Its regime is determined by the production goals. Further, it may be packaging if the product is plain milk, or the addition of fermentation cultures if a fermented milk drink or cheese is produced.

The raw material and the product undergo multiple microbial controls. This includes the milk culture at the input, the finished product culture, and the control of the product at the end of its shelf life. Additionally, on some advanced production lines, there is X-ray control to exclude even the slightest chance of foreign solid particles in the product. There is also a practice of aging the product under so-called stress conditions, for example at temperatures of 10, 25, or 30°C, to model the guaranteed shelf life and mitigate all risks.

Moreover, of course, there are a number of requirements for the workers involved in this process, ranging from a relevant higher education to a sanitary book.

“Take it, take it! Fresh and homemade!”

And a tear of joy may roll if you are lucky and this is really the case. Because if your seller lives three houses away, you know that they actually have a cow, you see that they adhere to basic hygiene rules, then there is some hope for “fresh” or “homemade.”

As practice shows, market vendors are not always aware of what that cow looks like. In reality, they often sell counterfeit products of unknown origin. Because, if one can imagine that some unscrupulous seller might try to dilute milk with water, to counterfeit a product with vegetable fats, the ordinary cow owner would need considerable talent and means.

This is often observed by activists from public organizations conducting raids to collect and control products, including at organized food markets.

We were lucky to speak with the head of the NGO “Consumer Trust” Olena Kulykova. According to her, among dairy products sold at food markets, the most frequently falsified are butter, cottage cheese, hard cheeses, and condensed milk. Slightly less common but still many is sour cream. And even a counterfeit is not always the greatest evil when it comes to microbiological indicators.

Before selling a product, each seller must provide samples for analysis to the market laboratory staff, which is subordinate to the State Consumer Service. They have to verify the presence of sanitary books and confirm that the cow from which the product was made is healthy. The market laboratory conducts rapid testing (most often this is a rather limited set of indicators, considering there is neither time nor resources for full biochemical and microbiological analysis) — pH, reductase test (a very approximate method for determining the total microbial count in a product), radiological control. There is no control for falsification at all. But here, as the expert notes, based on the experience of conducted raids, there is some probability that these studies are sometimes performed only on paper. Because analyses of products that had favorable lab results revealed many Staphylococcus and E. coli. Unfortunately, market workers from the State Consumer Service declined to comment on these results. It is fair to add that for testing, the seller can provide one sample of the product, while selling a product from a different batch, i.e., produced at another time. Worrying is also the non-observance of temperature regimes during storage and sale of dairy products, especially relevant in summer. In addition, there is a flagrant neglect of sanitary norms — products are stored in dirty containers, on open counters, surfaces are often crawling with insects, and sellers do not even bother washing their hands. There were also cases of storing products that were not sold during the day simply under the counter — without a refrigerator, only covered with a dirty rag.

What can we say about spontaneous markets and sales “from a car,” whose sellers we often see for the first and last time? Heat, dirty dishes and hands, dust that flies and settles on the products sold on the asphalt. Shigella, Staphylococcus, Klebsiella, mold, and if you are really unlucky, brucellosis or even tuberculosis—and this is not even the full list!

Besides the frequent reason to buy that mythical “homemade and natural,” consumers are sometimes driven by simple pity and a desire to support an elderly seller. But is it really worth making someone better off if it harms you?

"Take it, take it! Fresh and homemade!"