High prevalence of water and neutralizer adulteration in raw cow’s milk in Malawi: A wake-up call for the informal market regulation

Title : High prevalence of water and neutralizer adulteration in raw cow’s milk in Malawi: A wake-up call for the informal market regulation

Abstract:

The production and consumption of milk is widely practiced across Sub-Saharan Africa, including Malawi. In this region, the majority of the population is under-resourced and lacks robust food safety testing systems. Coupled with limited enforcement of regulations, farmers and vendors resort to technological fraud, such as milk adulteration, exposing consumers to avoidable hazards. Unfortunately, the burden of milk adulteration in Malawi remains unknown. A cross-sectional study was therefore conducted with 384 randomly collected raw milk samples from three regions (Southern: Thyolo District, Central: Lilongwe District, and Northern: Karonga District) of Malawi and two selling channels (farmers and vendors) to assess the prevalence and levels of the predominant adulterants. A substantial water and neutralizer adulteration was etected in 91.1% (n = 350) and 58.6% (n = 225) of the samples, respectively. Low prevalence of adulteration was detected in urea (3.6%, n = 14), while hydrogen peroxide was not detected in any sample. Milk adulteration was associated with the selling channel and location (p < 0.001). The highest prevalence of neutralizers (90.1%, n = 64) and urea (8.5%, n = 6) was observed in samples from Thyolo vendors, while water (100%) was recorded from Karonga (n = 78) and Thyolo vendors (n = 59). Overall, neutralizer levels were significantly higher (p < 0.001) in samples collected from Karonga than in those from the other locations. However, there were no significant differences in neutralizer levels from Thyolo and Lilongwe districts (p = 0.991). In Lilongwe and Karonga Districts, neutralizer levels in vendors’ samples were not considerably different (p ˃ 0.05) from farmers' samples. Therefore, interventions are needed to reduce the occurrence of milk fraud in such unregulated and under-regulated markets.

Biography:

Martin Henderson Kalumbi is a Malawian lecturer, researcher, and academic administrator, currently serving at Malawi Adventist University (Malamulo Campus), with over 9 years of experience in tertiary education. He holds an undergraduate degree in Biomedical Science (Mzuzu University, Malawi, 2014) and MSc in Human Nutrition (Lilongwe University of Agriculture and Natural Resources, Malawi, 2020), and he is currently pursuing a PhD in Food Science and Technology with a specialization in food quality and safety (Eduardo Mondlane University, Mozambique). His research interests are in Food Safety, Quality, Microbiology, Toxicology, and Chemistry broadly, with applications in microbial metabolism, fermentations, and characterization, antimicrobial discovery, and characterization of food adulterants, antibiotic residues, toxins, and heavy metals. He has contributed to teaching, curriculum development, quality assurance at higher institutions, and research coordination, while actively publishing in peer-reviewed journals and presenting at national and international conferences. Martin is the author of over 10 papers and reviewed papers in leading journals indexed in Web of Science and Scopus. His work is driven by a commitment to improving food safety and public health, particularly within the context of low and middle-income countries, including sub-Saharan Africa.