Testing of Dairy Products: Milk Components and Safety
From raw ingredients to finished products, dairy foods are routinely inspected and tested to ensure that specifications are met for compositional, performance and safety requirements. The federal government and many state governments create, promulgate and enforce laws designed to meet these requirements. First established over 100 years ago, US food laws can be divided into two broad areas of focus. One main focus area deals with the adulteration of food with harmful or unwholesome components. Examples of such harmful components include pathogenic bacteria, toxic chemicals, antibiotic residues, heavy metals, unapproved food additives, and physical hazards such as broken glass. The second main focus area deals with the misbranding of foods. For many dairy foods, the federal government has established standards of identity designed to ensure that consumers can have confidence that the products they are purchasing are authentic and consistent regardless of manufacturer or regional origin. For example, to legally apply the term Butter to a consumer product label in the US, demands that the product meet certain minimum compositional and safety standards. Additionally, the federal government requires that the label accurately display the identities of all ingredients contained in the food, including all main ingredients, food additives, processing aids and added nutrients, such as vitamins used for fortification. This second area of food law also requires that manufacturers declare the presence or even possible presence of al possible food allergens such a milk, peanut or wheat proteins. To be in compliance with both food laws, the manufacturer must document that the product has met the standards for both adulteration and misbranding concerns. The required documents are available upon request by a regulatory agent and contain data from microbiological, chemical and physical properties of the raw and finished products as well as process compliance records. While the main obligation for compliance with the regulations and data collection resides with the industry, governmental regulatory agencies randomly select and test products as a means of verification. Products found out of compliance with either set of regulations may be put on hold, recalled or destroyed at the authority of the regulatory agent. In many cases, the disposition of the products in question, the company involved, and the final outcome are deemed public knowledge and made available to the news media, providing further motivation to companies to work in compliance with the regulations and this avoid damaging publicity. Companies involved in violating these laws are also subject to legal action at both the government and civil level with outcomes such as property seizure, financial penalties and jail sentences.
Scott A.Rankin
Department of Food Science, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, USA
国际会议
奶牛营养与牛奶质量国际研讨会(ist International Symposium on Dairy Cow Nutrition and Milk Quality)
北京
英文
4-8
2009-05-04（万方平台首次上网日期，不代表论文的发表时间）