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Assessment of raw milk quality and stakeholders’ awareness on milk-borne health risks in Arusha City and Meru District, Tanzania

Overview of attention for article published in Tropical Animal Health and Production, April 2015
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Title
Assessment of raw milk quality and stakeholders’ awareness on milk-borne health risks in Arusha City and Meru District, Tanzania
Published in
Tropical Animal Health and Production, April 2015
DOI 10.1007/s11250-015-0810-y
Pubmed ID
Authors

J uma Bukuku Ngasala, Hezron Emmanuel Nonga, Mkumbukwa Madundo Angelo Mtambo

Abstract

A cross-sectional study was conducted to assess the quality of raw milk and stakeholders' awareness on milk-borne health risks and factors for poor milk hygiene in Arusha City and Meru District, Tanzania between October and December 2012. A total of 105 smallholder dairy farmers, milk vendors and milk retailers were interviewed, and milk samples were collected for physical, microbial and antibiotic residue analysis using standard procedures. Questionnaire results indicated high level of awareness (94 %) that drinking raw milk can predispose consumers to milk-borne diseases; nevertheless, 65 % of respondents consumed raw milk. Physicochemical analyses showed some of the milk had sediments (20 %), bad smell (21 %) and had clotted on alcohol test (27 %). About 36 % of milk samples had pH below 6.6, and 25 % had specific gravity below 1.028 g/ml. The mean total viable count (TVC) of milk from vendors is significantly (P < 0.05) higher than that from retailers and smallholder dairy farmers. Generally, 65 % of milk samples assessed had a higher TVC than the level recommended (2.0 × 10(5) cfu/ml) by the East African Community (EAC) standards. Up to 91 % of the milk samples had bacterial growth that included Eschericia coli (66 %), Staphylococcus aureus (33 %), Corynebacterium (11 %) and Pseudomonas (10 %). All smallholder dairy farmers were aware of drug residues, but majority (57 %) were unaware of human health effects caused by veterinary drug residues in milk. Up to 97 % of respondents reported to comply with drug withdrawal periods. This possibly led to all milk samples analysed to be negative from detectable levels of antibiotic residues. It is concluded that the level of awareness on milk quality is high, although practices associated with milking and post-harvest handling predispose milk to bacterial contamination which is a public health risk to milk consumers.

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The data shown below were collected from the profile of 1 X user who shared this research output. Click here to find out more about how the information was compiled.
Mendeley readers

Mendeley readers

The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 127 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.

Geographical breakdown

Country Count As %
Kenya 1 <1%
Unknown 126 99%

Demographic breakdown

Readers by professional status Count As %
Student > Master 21 17%
Researcher 16 13%
Student > Ph. D. Student 13 10%
Student > Doctoral Student 9 7%
Student > Postgraduate 9 7%
Other 16 13%
Unknown 43 34%
Readers by discipline Count As %
Agricultural and Biological Sciences 27 21%
Veterinary Science and Veterinary Medicine 15 12%
Medicine and Dentistry 7 6%
Social Sciences 7 6%
Immunology and Microbiology 5 4%
Other 19 15%
Unknown 47 37%
Attention Score in Context

Attention Score in Context

This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 1. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 13 April 2015.
All research outputs
#21,415,544
of 23,911,072 outputs
Outputs from Tropical Animal Health and Production
#922
of 1,384 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#229,736
of 267,676 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Tropical Animal Health and Production
#18
of 36 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 23,911,072 research outputs across all sources so far. This one is in the 1st percentile – i.e., 1% of other outputs scored the same or lower than it.
So far Altmetric has tracked 1,384 research outputs from this source. They receive a mean Attention Score of 2.3. This one is in the 1st percentile – i.e., 1% of its peers scored the same or lower than it.
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We're also able to compare this research output to 36 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one is in the 1st percentile – i.e., 1% of its contemporaries scored the same or lower than it.