Thanks to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), milk supplies in the United States have been tested for decades for the presence of certain antibiotics. Milk found to contain unacceptable levels of the selected six drugs is discarded. However, consumers are still being exposed to antibiotics in conventionally produced milk, and the FDA knows about it.
It appears some dairy farmers are slipping their cows antibiotics that are not on the government’s testing list, nor on the list of acceptable drugs to give to lactating cows. The presence of these antibiotics was revealed in a newly released FDA report entitled “Milk Drug Residue Sampling Survey.” This means that unless you choose organic milk and milk products, you could be exposing yourself and your family to these drugs.
Read about reasons to choose organic grass fed dairy cheese
Milk Testing in the United States
Drug residues are regulated by a variety of both federal and state food safety programs. The FDA and the states cooperate with the dairy industry in the National Conference on Interstate Milk Shipments (NCIMS). Under the NCIMS Grade A program, regulatory agencies in each state must report milk testing activities to the National Milk Drug Residue Data Base. A milk sample must be taken from every bulk tank of raw milk collected at each dairy farm as well as another sample from every truckload of raw milk that arrives at a dairy plant.
Milk samples from arriving truckloads must be tested for the presence of at least four of six antibiotics (the beta-lactam drugs amoxicillin, ampicillin, ceftiofur, cephapirin, cloxacillin, and penicillin G). If the results are positive, the raw milk samples from every farm that supplied the raw milk in that truckload must be tested as well. Any milk that contains illegal drug residues is not allowed to enter the human food supply chain.
