Local milk 'in line with EU safety standards'

Locally produced milk conforms to the high quality standards set by the European Union directive on food safety, the chief veterinary officer Lino Vella said yesterday.

Dr Vella was defending milk produced by local herdsmen and processed by the Malta Dairy Products during a press call organised by the Parliamentary Secretariat for Agriculture and Fisheries intended "to clarify any doubts that Maltese milk does not respect safety standards".

The statement came in reaction to an "anonymous" advert that referred to the fat content of Maltese milk using excerpts from a January 2003 issue of Aggornat, published by the Malta-EU Information Centre (MIC), which had dealt with the results of negotiations in the agricultural sector.

When the advert appeared, MIC dissociated itself from its contents, which advised consumers "to make an informed decision" when buying milk.

Among other statements on the milk's fat content and the stocking density of cattle in Maltese farms, the advert said that Maltese milk establishments were allowed to accept milk for further processing that did not comply with EU rules.

MIC's acting head Carmel Attard, who also addressed the press conference, held at the abattoir, reiterated that MIC had nothing to do with the adverts.

He insisted the advert had conveniently left out "crucial sentences" that determined the context in which negotiations were made.

"Malta negotiated with the EU to safeguard the farming industry and to help it compete in a single market on the one hand and to protect the right for choice and quality for consumers," Mr Attard said.

Dr Vella said Malta never had to negotiate on the quality standard of milk that reaches the consumer but on market standards. "The milk that leaves Maltese farms daily is within the standard limits requested by the European Union".

He said random samples are taken every day to test milk for the total bacterial count and current levels show that Maltese milk is of the highest quality.

"Fresh milk is free from tuberculosis, brucellosis and mad cow disease. Animals and milk are submitted to regular testing. Only two other countries have such high standards," Dr Vella said.

He said Malta was the first EU country to get its database of livestock approved by the Commission. This meant that all milk that ended up on people's tables could be traced and this ensured that the origin of all Benna milk that consumers bought was traceable. "The small size of the country is an advantage in this sense," he remarked.

Replying to the remark on the fat content of home-produced milk which appeared in the adverts, Dr Vella said the Maltese consumer seemed to prefer milk with 2.5 per cent fat content. This was, however, the only kind of milk available on the market for many years, along with the skimmed kind that contains around 0.3 per cent fat.

Benna milk with a 2.5 per cent fat content, in fact, lies somewhere between semi-skimmed milk, which has a 1.5 per cent fat content, and full cream (also known as whole milk) with a fat content of 3.7 per cent.

"Fat content could be easily varied according to changing consumer trends and has nothing to do with food safety," he said. In any case, he added, the issue of fat content has to do with drinking milk and not the milk used to produce other dairy products such as yoghurt or cheese.

Dr Vella said that if the EU had any doubt about the quality of local milk, it would have asked Malta to redress the situation. In certain cases, the EU had asked governments to close down food establishments that failed to respect quality standards and this was proof that the EU knew that home-produced milk respected safety standards.

The derogation that Malta had asked for was on the issue of somatic cell count. Dr Vella explained that this was a way of testing how efficiently cows actually produced milk. "It is a way in which to ensure market standards and had nothing to do with food safety, as the advert tried to imply," he said.

Victor Anastasi, quality controller at Malta Dairy Products, said the company's sales had reached acceptable thresholds. "It was expected that people would try new kinds of imported milk but the market is more stabilised now," he said.

Alf. Mizzi & Sons, which imports milk, on Wednesday objected to a television advert placed by Benna which, it said, slighted imported UHT long-life milk for not being fresh. The company called for the advert to be changed.

Essentially an issue of competition that should give more choice to the consumers, the whole affair was "a storm in a teacup with some milk", a journalist remarked.