IDF Issues Guidance To Help Determine Milk Fat Purity

The International Dairy Federation (IDF) recently released guidance on the determination of milkfat purity, providing important additional direction to both scientists and non-scientists involved in the testing of milk and dairy products.

Milkfat is an important component of milk and most dairy products. In addition to having a nutritional impact, it also provides numerous benefits to food products including flavour enhancement and desirable mouthfeel. However, the high price of milkfat means that it is susceptible to replacement by other animal fats or vegetable oils. Non-reporting of lowerquality ingredients risks the quality of dairy products and subsequently their reputation with consumers.

“The dairy sector is often required to prove the authenticity of its product against potential adulteration with vegetable oils or other animal fats. By providing this additional background information and guidance, we aim to assist both those who desire to set up the method and those who need a general understanding to interpret the results the method produces,” said lead author Dr Alastair MacGibbon.

IDF Bulletin 499/2019: Guidance on the practical application of IDF/ISO standard on the determination of milkfat purity provides guidance on the practical application of the International Standard ISO 17678|IDF 202 Milk and Milk Products – Determination of the milkfat purity by gas chromatography, a revision of which was recently published, and is designed to accommodate regional, seasonal and feed variations in authentic milkfat composition.

It aims to provide background information for those carrying out the testing to enable the method to be more easily incorporated into the laboratory. In addition, guidance on the interpretation of results is provided, which might assist managers, customers or regulators who do not need to know how work is carried out but do need to be able to place the result in context.

It is also hoped that greater knowledge of the testing and its advantages could lead to the replacement of some of the older test methods used in some regional regulations with this IDF/ISO standard, increasing harmonisation.