In the NWO ARF project: Healthy Cows – Healthy Food – Healthy Environment: Enhancing safety and quality of milk in Ethiopia the NLF 5-layer approach was piloted with 60 farmers in the community of Debre Zeit, Ethiopia. In this project, after an initial inventory of the main problems in cow and calf health, interventions were done consisting of training in cow and calf management, as well as the use of herbs for controling diseases (ethno veterinary medicine). The project was funded by the Applied Research Project of NWO
Importantly, this project also included training the personnel of the VDFACA state veterinary laboratory in Addis Ababa in milk quality testing techniques. The training took place in Wageningen at RIKILT (now Wageningen Food Safety Research) between October 28 – November 3, 2018 in the Netherlands. The training was very successful and the laboratory personnel proved to be able to do sampling and analysing milk in Ethiopia.
At field level the outcomes of the project included:
- 20% reductoin of cattle health costs
- 50% incresed milk quantity
- 60% reduced calf mortality
The laboratory studies based on the milk produced by the farmers also revealed improved milk quality:
- Reduced levels of use antibiotic residues (8%)
- Reduced levels of pathogen microbes (E-Coli 50% and Staphylocossus Aureus 30%)
- Improved levels of fat and protein, lactose, solid-non fat and density of milk
Please find here the PP with a project overview + milk quality improvements analysed, as presented by Maria Groot (WFSR) and Belachew Tefera (VDFACA) in 2021
And here you can find the PDF of the article in word, entitled: Milk quality improvement through training and interventions: Experience sharing from NWO-ARF project