The Ministry of Agriculture plans to institute regulations that will ensure that farmers whose milk is richer in components such as butterfat get more per litre of milk.
If the proposal is passed and adopted by parliament, then farmers will be paid based on the quality of their milk as opposed to the usual way where farmers were paid based on weight and litres of their products.
The quality-based pricing model will be influenced by the amount of butterfat in a kilogramme of raw milk, which should also be free from antibiotics and added water.
”Players in value chain are messing up with the milk. From water adulteration to addition of chemicals to prolong the shelf life of milk to others adding forms of fat, wheat flour, sugar some even preserve it with soap,” Emmanuel Kabaki, GM Milk Procurement and Extension Brookside told participants at a recent dairy workshop in Nairobi.
He said there are numerous instances where milk has tested positive for antibiotics.
Mr Kimutai, the PS agriculture said they are streamlining animal feeds industry to ensure that farmers get quality feeds, which plays an important role in the production of quality milk.
“We have a lot of low quality feeds out there and what we are trying to do is to ensure that there are laws in place to streamline manufacturing of feeds,” said Mr Kimutai.
Cows that may have been under treatment for diseases like mastitis where antibiotics are used are required to be isolated and not produce milk.
Sometimes the isolation period can go for as long as 10 days, which some farmers take to be too long and resume milking with the effect being antibiotic residuals found in dairy products.
Some of the Kenyans and especially dairy farmers are already reading some mischievous plans in the new regulations.
Many are suspecting that some leading milk processors in the country ran by powerful politicians might be planning to introduce such laws so as to cause milk shortages which will then open doors for their companies to import cheap quality milk from abroad and in specific United Kingdom.
