Salmonella Scare in an Australian Milk Powder Plant
New Zealand Dairy Giant, FONTERRA says a salmonella outbreak at its Cobden plant in Australia has been resolved without affecting any of its milk powder products.
The Cobden factory was closed for four days at the end of January after the pathogen was detected in an “environment sample” during routine monitoring. Both the manufacturer and the local Dairy Authority (Dairy Food Safety Victoria) has been working closely to rectify the problem.
Due to intensive testing, none of the company’s products were affected by the outbreak and milk destined for Cobden was likely to have been distributed to its Dennington plant.
Further information was not available last night. United Dairy Farmers of Victoria president Doug Chant said he had not been notified of any problem in Cobden.
“I’m certainly unaware of it,” Mr Chant said. “It probably doesn’t really have to be brought to our attention.â€It’s an issue for the factory and I’m quite sure they’ll be dealing with it adequately.”
He said salmonella outbreaks were fairly uncommon in the dairy industry. “The practices of our factories are world class. We have very, very few problems as a rule and whatever the cause I imagine it was fairly isolated.” Mr Chant said the fact Fonterra had detected the pathogen in the environment rather than in the product demonstrated the company is being proactive in its approach to eliminate the source of the problem before it is escalated further.
