Technology of Milk processing

In rural areas, milk may be processed fresh or sour. The choice depends on available equipment, product demand and on the quantities of milk available for processing. In Africa, smallholder milk-processing systems use mostly sour milk. Allowing milk to ferment prior to processing has a number of advantages and processing sour milk will continue to be important in this sector. Sour-milk technology is used for processing batches of up to 15 litres of accumulated sour milk. This will be described in the section on sour-milk technology. The fat fraction separates from the skim milk when milk is allowed to stand for 30 to 40 minutes. This is known a ‘creaming’. A number of methods are employed to separate cream from milk. An understanding of the creaming process is necessary to maximize the efficiency of the separation process. Milking machines are used to harvest milk from cows when manual milking becomes inefficient or labor intensive. The claw is an assembly that connects the short pulse tubes and short milk tubes from the teat cups to the long pulse tube and long milk tube. This important book will be useful to all segments of the food and dairy industry including producers, entrepreneurs, consultants, plant and quality assurance managers, suppliers of inputs and services, planners, extension workers, R and D scientists, students and scholars.