Dairy Farmers expands drug screening program

By Susan Mann

Dairy Farmers of Ontario will be starting a broader surveillance for drug residues in milk effective Nov. 1.

Routine testing of producer samples at the lab will be discontinued. George MacNaughton, director of Dairy Farmers production division, says the routine testing program looks at drugs the industry is already screening.

All processors screen milk loads for beta lactams, the main group of drugs farmers use, and several randomly screen for sulfa-based drugs and tetracycline. In addition to beta lactams, there are seven other families of drugs in use, including sulfa-based drugs and tetracycline.

“What we’re going to do is we’re going to concentrate on the five families of drugs that are not routinely checked,” he explains, noting it’s somewhat redundant to test producer samples for drugs that were already tested in loads by processors.

The changes to the inhibitor-testing program were outlined in a discussion paper released at Dairy Farmers’ fall regional meetings for farmer delegates last week. More