By Andrea Frazeur

Total Quality Management has reached the dairy barn.

It's called "Dairy TQM" and it's a new computer program designed by the University of Minnesota Center for Farm Financial Management. Jeff Reneau, a university extension animal scientist, says Dairy TQM will make it possible for dairy farmers to thoroughly document that they are producing safe and wholesome milk.

Dairy TQM is an ongoing inspection tool that allows farmers to evaluate many aspects of their dairy operation, Reneau says. In February, he began working with 10 Minnesota farmers to determine the program's effectiveness. "We're in the infancy of this," he says. "But we recognize the United States needs a way to successfully manage food safety and quality in dairy products on the farm."

Ultimately, Dairy TQM could provide the assurance of milk wholesomeness required by milk buyers from other states and countries.

Milk exported here
In 1997, Minnesota produced 9.27 billion pounds of milk, roughly seven percent of the U.S. milk production. About 95 percent of that milk was processed in Minnesota. In December of 1997, a typical month, Minnesota milk processors produced 138 million pounds of milk and 697 million pounds of dairy products like butter, cheese, ice cream, yogurt and nonfat dry milk. Most of those products were shipped throughout the United States and the world.

Milk and milk products leaving Minnesota must conform to the ordinances of the National Conference of Interstate Milk Shippers, an organization that governs milk shipping between states and requires documentation of safe, wholesome dairy products at the farm level. Dairy TQM is able to provide that documentation, Reneau says.

It will also furnish information for buyers from other countries, he says. "If Japan comes to our state and says, 'We would like to buy some milk that meets this specification. Can you verify that?' we'll say, 'Here's a whole list of producers who meet all those specifications, and we can prove it to you.'"

Managing with the facts
Total Quality Management is a system credited to American management theorist W. Edwards Deming. Initially rejected in America, his ideas were embraced by the Japanese, particularly in manufacturing. Today, TQM is a management concept used worldwide.

Deming taught that through continuous improvement programs -- setting measurable goals and documenting results -- companies could boost overall performance. This is the model behind the Dairy TQM program. Farmers will be able to pinpoint areas of operational weakness, design procedures with measurable goals, and document results.

Farmers load information into the Dairy TQM program from a number of different sources. In the bulk tank, for example, a thermometer with a microchip reads and records milk temperatures every 10 minutes. Periodically data is transferred to the Dairy TQM software and can be displayed on a "Farm Bulk Tank Milk" report. All milk is sampled and tested by processors to ensure it has low somatic (body tissue) cell and bacterial counts, and is completely free of even small traces of antibiotics or other drugs.

Outside information can also be imported to the Dairy TQM system including herd management information from the national Dairy Herd Improvement Association and test results from dairy labs and milk plants. Farmers may also key in feed, supplies and drug treatment records.

When all this information is compiled, Dairy TQM provides documentation for milk quality. Ultimately, farmers may be able to modem the information or send it via computer disk to the Minnesota Department of Agriculture in lieu of on-site inspection.

Dialing down on-site inspections
In Minnesota, Grade A dairy farms are subject to twice-a-year surprise inspections by the Minnesota Department of Agriculture. MDA regulatory specialists inspect bulk tank rooms, milking parlors, supply rooms, offices, bathrooms, barns, and exercise lots to ensure that everything is clean and supplies are stored correctly.

Each inspector makes both oral and written reports. The written report serves as a permit to sell Grade A milk, and must be posted in the bulk tank room. Under the Dairy TQM system, farmers would post a printout from their computer rather than a written report from an inspector.

Reneau says the software could stretch MDA funds while maintaining a high level of food quality. If Dairy TQM shows that a farm has high quality milk, the MDA would not have to visit that farm for inspection; instead, MDA could focus attention on farms that need help.

"This is an inspection system that doesn't rely on somebody physically being on the farm every six months," Reneau says. "If a farm can consistently meet all the standards for safety and quality, why send inspectors to the farm that's already doing a good job?"

Tracking it all
Dairy TQM forecasts how long farm inventories will last. It tells how long a farmer must throw away the milk from a cow receiving drug treatment. The program can list each cow's treatment record, including disease treated, drugs used, and the costs of dumping the cow's milk.

The program is set up to encourage farmers and veterinarians to sit down together and design appropriate treatment protocols. Food and Drug Administration drug tables are included, so farmers can look up specific drug information.

The program also tracks the pounds of milk shipped per day. It graphs somatic cell counts. It can even tabulate information on the percent of fat and protein in each milk sample. "Farmers can decide if they want this report daily, weekly or monthly," Reneau says.

Evolution of a program
Reneau first began working on documentation in the early 1990s, when he chaired the American Association of Bovine Practitioners mastitis committee. The committee developed a handwritten record-keeping system which allowed farmers to manage and document drug treatments. "It became a standard for collecting treatment information on dairy cattle in the United States," Reneau says. "Dairy TQM was really built using that as a template."

From there, Reneau received $8,000 from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to develop a pilot Dairy TQM program. As he began work on the program, he realized the importance of incorporating the concept of Hazard Analysis Critical Control Points. HACCP, first developed by the Pillsbury Company for NASA, involves identifying potential food safety processing problems, controlling processing in critical areas, and monitoring systems for food safety breaches, with appropriate corrective actions and record-keeping.

Because of AURI's interest in HACCP, Reneau requested grant funds to improve Dairy TQM. Bill Stoll, AURI dairy products scientist, assisted Reneau in getting a grant through AURI's Waseca office. He sees the software as part of a "growing awareness that quality starts at the producer, not after it's delivered to the dairy plant."

Reneau successfully used the AURI money to build the Dairy Herd Improvement, bulk tank and milk lab HACCP interfaces into the program. He further leveraged the AURI grant as matching funds to qualify for a $30,000 grant from USDA. With the USDA grant, Reneau added graphs and other types of interpretive data.