Milk gets shipped offshore

Dairy Connect, the peak dairy lobby group in NSW, is just about to send its first shipment of fresh milk to China.

Executive officer Mike Logan says new overseas markets are the key to the state's dairy industry being able to expand.

He says it's taken a long time to try and finalise the details surrounding inspection and quarantine procedures. However, the first shipment could be heading offshore in a matter of days.

"So we're about to make a small shipment which will be a trial shipment; maybe 30 or 50 litres which we don't plan to sell. It's just so we can start to develop a relationship with the Chinese authorities," Mr Logan said.

"We need to assure the Chinese that they can rely on Australia's testing facilities and procedures.

"We can't have the Chinese authorities test the milk; their testing process takes two weeks and so by the time it gets there and then gets tested, it's gone off.

"It's a slow and long process. We've been working on this deal with the Chinese for the past 18 months."

Mr Logan says the Chinese are 'obsessed' with dairy but don't trust their own dairy products.

"They've had some scares in the past. They've taken those scares very seriously and it's unnerved them."

It was 2008 when China was faced with the melamine-tainted milk scandal and a nationwide food safety crisis.

Following this week's news that multinational dairy company, Fonterra, has had its own botulism scare, Mr Logan says the lobby group will be taking extra care to ensure nothing goes wrong with the export process.

Source: ABC Rural News, 9 August 2013