Dairy is the largest agricultural commodity in India, contributing ~5% to the nation’s GDP and employing millions of farmers across the country. India is the largest producer of milk, with its contribution in global milk production pegged at nearly 23%. Not only that, but India also exports dairy products worth over $200 million worldwide.
While these figures showcase India’s prowess as a milk producer and exporter, a sobering reality is that milk adulteration is a prevalent problem in India. Some reports claim that over 70% of the milk produced in India is adulterated to some extent. It is estimated that conventional adulteration testing at any node of the supply chain, particularly at the initial stages, can allow adulterated milk to enter the dairy value chains. This adulterated milk not only creates a negative impact on the health of consumers, but it also leads to trust-issues across the entire dairy ecosystem, which hinders the export potential of dairy commodities in international markets.
It is important to understand why milk adulteration remains largely prevalent in India. The major reason is widespread adoption of organoleptic testing for detection of adulteration at collection centers. This is a manual method where scent and taste of the milk are ascertained by a milk grader, to manually assess the presence of any foriegn material. After this rudimentary quality test, milk is gathered from various sources and collected together in a large vessel. This causes dilution of adulterations, making them difficult to catch at the later stages. More often than not, this is where adulterated milk enters the supply chain.
The collected milk is moved to big chilling centers, where it is tested for nutritional composition as well as adulteration. If the adulteration gets detected, then hundreds of liters of milk is thrown away leading to immense food wastage. However, due to dilution of adulterants, they are not detected through standard lab tests.
Through this process, the adulterated milk moves ahead in the supply chain to processing centers, and ultimately, reaches us, the consumers. Milk is an essential part of the Indian diet, with heavy consumption of milk and milk-products among children as well as adults across the country. Thus, adulterated milk easily finds its way into our meals and causes numerous health issues.
There are existing solutions which can solve this problem, but they are unaffordable and resource consuming, and thus cannot be deployed at a massive scale. So, what is the solution?
The answer is by digitizing manual organoleptic tests using digital sensory devices that imitate conventional testing, but in a more accurate and standardized way. These sensors, in collaboration with deep-tech solutions, including AI/ML models and analytics provide assured results for purity of samples.
In the era of agriculture 4.0, tech-interventions will be instrumental in reducing the prevalence of adulterated milk in the country. Integration of various technologies through full-stack solutions can not only provide quality and adulteration testing in less than minute, but it can also provide end-to-end traceability to agribusinesses and even consumers.
Source: Times of India