Project description
Milk that is better for calves and better for Europe’s milk production
Humans are not unique in the fact that nutrition early in life impacts adult health and well-being. The productivity of milk cows is affected by calves’ early life nutrition, and bacteria in the milk they drink increase the risk of disease. Pasteurisation is currently employed to address this – requiring significant energy, time and money while often leaving measurable amounts of bacteria in the milk. The EU-funded MilkGuard project has developed a process by the same name that eliminates virtually all bacteria without heating at a fraction of the cost. Europe’s calves will soon be enjoying mum’s milk full of nutrition and free of pathogens, boosting their milk productivity in adulthood.
Objective
The problem: Dairy farms are continuously aiming at increasing milk yield per cow in the herd. Calf early life nutrition dictates
their development. Farmers feed a variety of liquid feeds including milk and milk replacers. The state-of-the-art method to
reduce the risk of disease spread while feeding milk is to pasteurize it. Though natural milk is the ideal nutrition for calves,
the need for pasteurization represents an additional cost for farmers. Importantly, on-farm pasteurized milk may still contain
measurable amounts of bacteria and the overall procedure is time- and energy-demanding, which hampers wide application
amongst small and medium dairy farms.
The solution: We at Calvex have developed the milkGUARD solution, which enables the safe employment of optimum
nutrition for calves, i.e. natural milk, free of pathogens. The milkGUARD solution combines state-of-the-art methods for fast
killing of pathogens in natural milk. In a three-stage continuous process it disinfects milk with an efficacy of >99.99%. By
providing a system that avoids indirect heating elements and works in continuous, we expect to reduce the operating costs
to dairy farmers when treating milk for calf-feeding, offering 77% net savings when compared to conventional on-farm
pasteurizers.
The market: Milk is the EU's main agricultural product in terms of value – approx. 15% of agricultural output – with 160
million tonnes of cow’s milk produced in 2014. The EU milk processing industry is a pillar of the European economy, which
contributes positively to the EU trade balance, bringing over €10 billion surplus. The implementation of the innovation project
will place Calvex in a strong position to exploit a market potential over five years exceeding €83 million.
Fields of science
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesmicrobiologybacteriology
- agricultural sciencesanimal and dairy sciencedairy
- medical and health scienceshealth sciencesnutrition
- medical and health sciencesbasic medicinepharmacology and pharmacypharmaceutical drugsantibiotics
- social scienceseconomics and businesseconomicssustainable economy
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
SME-2 - SME instrument phase 2Coordinator
7800 SKIVE
Denmark
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.