Purity above all else
by Sarah Haines
hen it comes to milk, purity rises above all else. And that's why the University of Guelph's Laboratory Services division is in the dairy industry's corner.
Laboratory Services is formerly the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs' (OMAFRA) Agricultural and Food Laboratory Servi c es and Veterinary Laboratory Services Branch. It's one of the five institutions * that joined the university through an enhanced partnership with the ministry in April 1997. The division's home base is an 88,000-square-foot state-of-the-art lab next to the new OMAFRA headquarters.
Laboratory Services has an analytical, regulatory, research co-ordination and animal-health mandate. Its expansive milk-testing program is by far its largest regulatory focus, making up nearly half of the centre's entire budget.
"Laboratory Services is unique in that it combines innovative research with standard province-wide milk-testing functions," says the division's research manager, John Lynch.
The lab tests milk samples from more than 7,000 dairy producers across the province. Fifteen samples are collected randomly from every farm each month. One goes for regulatory testing, four are for compositional testing and 10 are available for special investigations as information samples or for research purposes. The entire testing program sees a whopping two million samples pass through Laboratory Services' facilities every year.
Regulatory testing. Provincial regulations dictate milk's purity -- and Laboratory Services is the purity checkpoint. Technicians check for the presence of antibiotic residues, bacteria, added water and somatic cells in milk samples. One research focus investigates a microbial hazard called verotoxigenic E. coli or "hamburger disease," which is also found in milk. Laboratory Services has adopted new technologies that increase the accuracy and sensitivity of verotoxigenic E. coli identification.
Compositional testing. Health-conscious consumers want milk with less fat. That has driven the dairy industry to pay producers for other components such as various types of protein and lactose, in what's called a multi-component pricing system. "When measured against traditional milk testing, which simply quantified fat percentages, the new system, which analyses fats, proteins and carbohydrates in milk, is comparatively rigorous," says Lynch. In addition, new analyses to identify specific types of vitamin levels have recently been developed.
Research. Lynch says the availability of producer samples for research gives scientists a highly accurate perspective of the industry. For example, one research program involving Laboratory Services and the Ontario Veterinary College is examining iodine levels in milk, which may be influenced by the use of anti-microbial teat washes and teat dips on the farm.
"We broaden our knowledge base for dairy research when we link up producers and scientists," says Lynch. "Collaboration between Laboratory Services and the university is key to maintaining high standards of milk quality."
Laboratory Services is certified by the Standards Council of Canada and recently became the first public-sector analytical laboratory to be awarded International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 9002 status, signifying global standards of excellence in quality and safety testing. High-speed testing systems based on gold standards of chemical analysis, technologies unavailable elsewhere under one roof and an evolving team of top-notch scientists -- including dairy science pioneers like Les Szijarto -- have enabled this centre to specialize in a broad spectrum of research.
