Abstract:
The adulteration of milk fat with foreign fat has been and still is a major concern in
the dairy industry. The increasing number of food producers and the outstanding
amount of imported foodstuffs enables the producers to mislead and cheat consumers.
In addition, ignorance and unfair market behaviour may endanger consumer health
and misleading can lead to poisoning.
Milk fat is one of the most expensive commodity fats on the market; therefore, the
detection of foreign fat in milk fat is a real issue. Introduction of vegetable fat in milk
fat reduces the milk fat content of milk thereby reducing the quality and the
nutritional value of milk.
The current research was carried out at Industrial Technology Institute (ITI). The
Industrial Technology Institute is a wholly owned institute of the Government of Sri
Lanka and functions under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Science and
Technology.
The study focused on developing a quick and easy method for the detection of
vegetable fat in milk fat. Accordingly using the fatty acid profile of milk to determine
the presence of vegetable fat in the milk powder samples was the best method
compared to the others. The characteristic feature of milk is its fatty acid composition,
which mainly consists of short chain fatty acids, whereas the vegetable fats consist
mainly of long chain fatty acids. And hence milk fat purity or more precisely
adulteration of vegetable fat in milk can be detected by capillary gas chromatography
using the fatty acid profile of milk..
According to the SLS the milk should contain purely of milk fat and should not
contain any traces of foreign fat. Therefore customers should be informed of the
addition of vegetable fat in milk fat. Out of the 22 samples which were tested for
adulteration, only two samples had added vegetable fat, which cannot be considered
as an adulterant since it’s mentioned in the ingredients. So the 22 samples of milk
powder imported by Sri Lanka are purely of milk fat and safe to consume.
