Tackling the big testing issues in dairy
24 October 2022
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New Food sits down with Conor Butler, Director of FBA Laboratories, to discuss how the company has been addressing chlorate and perchlorate in dairy and what future concerns lay ahead for labs.
In today’s world everything is driven by compliance – hence why testing is so critical.
As a laboratory, the trick is to find the analysis before it becomes important, having been linked to health problems such as adversely affecting the human thyroid.1,2 However, it’s an even bigger concern for the infant formula category, with both chlorate and perchlorate having shown to exhibit hepatotoxicity in infants.
These chemicals are breakdown products of sodium hypochlorite solution (bleach), which was once the sterilant of choice for the dairy industry. In the Republic of Ireland, for example, the majority of milking powders and tanks were previously washed out by chlorine-containing solutions that acted as a microbial inhibitor.
With infants being particularly vulnerable to these chemicals, formula regulation now necessitates ultra-low concentrations for these chemicals.
Download this interview with FBA Laboratories and to find out more about how they and others have addressed chlorate and perchlorate in dairy.
