Quality monitoring according to the legislation of North Rhine-Westphalia. Results from heat-treated milk analysed between January 1997 and June 1999.

摘要

The transfer into practice of the HACCP (Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point) guidelines of the Codex Alimentarius was enacted into legislation for the German dairy industry by means of Section 16 of the Milk Act (Milch-Verordnung) from 24 April 1995. In North Rhine-Westphalia this Act is implemented by the official analyses of milk and milk products according to the State Quality Act (Landesgute-Verordnung), which results in the application of additional methods, procedures and analyses forthe scrutiny of the HACCP concept. Evaluation of the results of 828 samples of heat-treated milk from North Rhine-Westphalia, analysed between 1 January 1997 and 31 May 1999, demonstrated that 93.9% of pasteurized and 99.6% of UHT and sterilized milk samples fulfilled the requirements of the new State Quality Act from 1996. Samples that did not fulfil these requirements failed predominantly for microbiological reasons. In 18 of 592 samples of pasteurized milk, coliforms were detected (in 0.1 ml of milk) and in 10 samples the bacterial numbers exceeded 200thin000 c.f.u/ml. Variations in the physico-chemical (5 samples) and sensory properties (5 samples) were extremely rare. For the additional parameters (residues, contaminants and pathogens) only 1 sample with a positive result for antibiotic residues (Brilliant Black Reduction Test) was found, whilst all other results were within the limits or negative for the parameters tested. These results demonstrate the high quality standard of heat-treated consumer milk in North Rhine-Westphalia and emphasise the importance of the State Quality Act in controlling product quality and the HACCP-concept within dairy factories.