**3.4 Marketing of milk and milk products**

304 Epidemiology Insights

**Skim milk**

Manual cream separation

> Cooking (50-70°C, 50-70 mins)

Fermentation: 2-3 days

Ambient temperature: <20 - >30°C

**Ayib Aguat** 

Fig. 5. Flow diagram of milk processing in cooperative centers in the highlands of Ethiopia

Milk products are generally more stable than fresh milk because they are more acidic and/or contain less moisture. Salt may also be added to milk products to prolong their shelf life. Applying principles of acidification, moisture reduction and salting (O'Mahony and Peters, 1987) can thus make milk products of good storage stability. All of the smallholder producers interviewed and about 82% of cooperatives stored their products at ambient temperatures. However, about 9% of the cooperatives have a refrigerator and the rest used cold water to store their products in cool conditions. Type of equipment used for different

**Aluminum/Stainless steel Plastic containers Wooden containers**

**Fresh whole milk** 

**Butter Arera** 

(Ethiopian cottage h )

milk operations in the cooperative settings is presented in Table 1.

**Purpose N Equipment used (frequencies, %)** 

Table 1. Equipment used for different milk operations in cooperative settings

Milk collection 22 65.9 34.0 - Milk storage 22 76.2 23.8 - Cream storage 22 77.5 22.5 - Butter storage 22 55.0 15.0 30.0 Cheese storage 22 88.2 11.8 -

**Cream**

Fermentation Churning

**3.3 Storage** 

There are basically two marketing systems in the central highlands of Ethiopia: formal and informal. In the formal system milk is collected at cooperative or private milk collection centers and transported to processing plants. In this system, there are somehow milk quality tests (alcohol and clot-on-boiling tests and density) up on delivery, and therefore the quality of milk is fairly secured. Producers supplying milk in this system pay a due emphasis in the production, storage and transportation of milk if their milk has to be accepted. In the informal system producers supply their surplus production to their neighbors and/or in local markets, either as liquid milk or in the form of butter and/or *Ayib* (O'Connor, 1992). In this system, the quality of milk and milk products is very poor mainly due to the prevailing situation where producers have limited knowledge of dairy product handling coupled with the inadequacy of dairy infrastructure such as electricity and clean water in the production areas.

In Ethiopia, there is no an operational hygienic regulation set for smallholder marketed dairy products. This indicates that the health of the dairy consuming community is not secured. This particularly holds true for *Ayib,* which is consumed with *Enjera* without farther treatment (Duteurtre, 1998). On open markets buyers of milk products practice organoleptic tests. The transaction of *Ayib* is particularly subject to such tests and it is uncommon that a buyer of *Ayib* is not tongue-testing the *Ayib* before buying it. This type of test is only partly associated with the effects of putrefactive microorganisms that can be detected by a simple tongue test. The presence of pathogenic microorganisms, however, cannot be detected by such tests.

There are reports that depict experiences of certain cooperatives around the Selale area (about 14%) (Yilma, 1999) that had a rewarding mechanism through better payment for good quality milk supplied. Such an approach encourages cooperative member and nonmember farmers to be concerned about sanitary conditions during milk production and subsequent handling.
