Microbial contamination of cow’s milk and operator hygiene

Abstract

To obtain high quality, ecologically pure milk, it is necessary to limit the possibility of access of microorganisms into it and their proliferation. From the point of view of compliance with the sanitary standards and the health of the cow‟s udder, the milking operator must take care of adequate hygiene throughout the technological process. In order to ensure such standards and protect animal health, a method of hand hygienic antiseptic is proposed for use, which involves the removal of mechanical contamination from the hands and treatment of their skin with a disinfectant containing ethanol - 62%, propylene glycol - 0.1%, triethanolamine - 0.2%, cross-linked copolymer of acrylic acid - 0.3%, polyethylene glycol ether alpha-tocopherol ferrol A - 0.01%, glycerol - 1.0%, diethyl phthalate - 0.08% and deionized water - 36.31%. It has been established that with a sanitary-hygienic treatment of the operator‟s hands before milking according to the developed method the correlation coefficient between the total point estimation of hygienic condition of hands and the level of bacterial contamination of cows‟ milk (CFU) decreases (r=+0.990) (p<0.001), which provides for the high quality product (according to the State Standard 3662:2015). To assess the hygiene quality of the milking operator hands, as a tool for determining and controlling the level of hygiene of personnel, a method has been developed that establishes a 3-point assessment, which corresponds to a universal evaluation system and allows to evaluate the quality of hygiene according to the following point scale: I - good, II - satisfactory; III - unsatisfactory.