1. Since milk is a highly perishable food, temperature plays a big role in transportation. In Philippines, we experience high temperatures. Distance from factories is definitely an issue.
2. Milk storage is important since we are a tropical country. Proximity within a factory is crucial to ensure milk maintain its quality.

1. i think the main challenge is the temperature of the vehicle, even though the distance is far but if the vehicle performs well and keep the milk in the correct temperature then we can have a good quality milk
2. Indonesian relies to small-holder dairy farmers, there is cooperative who collect the milk from farmers and help transporting the milk to manufacturers. there are risk as the quality of milk from farmers may be not at the same level (despite the initial test), also proper vehicle may not always be available.

1. Keeping milk at the right temperature in the vehicle is the most difficult part. As soon as the milk passes out through the teat channel it starts getting contaminated by microorganisms. In order to minimize the risk of bacterial growth it is important to cool down the milk as soon as possible to a low temperature, preferably 4°C or lower. It is thus very important to cool down immediately the milk after milking and rapidly transport to the processing factory. In developing countries, collecting and transporting milk from farm to processing factory remain challenging as there are many small scale producers and milk is not is usually transported in bulk tankers but in milk bucket or even in milk cans. Milk collectors usually collect milk cans from several producers in rural areas and then transport them by car/motorbike to the factory. Milk in cans is uncooled or barely cooled, so the duration of transport is of primary importance in ensuring the delivery of good-quality milk.
2. As discussed above, in developing countries like Vietnam, there are lots of small-scale producers who are widely dispersed in rural areas. Generally, milk from small-scale milk producers is transported in milk cans by the producers themselves or by milk collectors. As the cans are not insulated, the microorganism could grow rapidly during milk transportation from farm to factory, leading to microbiological issue. The factories should establish their own milk collector system to collect milk buckets from the farm to be able to control the transportation of the milk to the factory.

I think the hardest part of getting the right transportation is how the transportation system can maintain the cold chain of milk from farm to manufacturer. Distance is not an issue as long as we can maintain & control the temperature of the milk and potential hazards during the transportation. This can be overcome by good performance of the milk tanker, being able to maintain the temperature for a long time, and if there is an insignificant drop in temperature that does not cause the potential hazards.
If there aren’t possible using the milk tanker.
The risk that will arise related to this regard is the potential food safety hazards that come from microbiological hazards. The growth of microbial in the milk will increase was related to the breaking of the cold chain of milk.
To reduce the risk, my opinion is there are several things we can do as follows :
1. To increase the level of cleanliness and sanitizing and the skill and knowledge of personnel in farm to minimize number of microbial content in the milk.
2. Same opinion with Ibu Anggi for delivering milk to milk cooperative as soon as possible after milking process.
In Indonesia, small milk farmers can sell their milk to manufacturer through milk cooperative. The milk cooperative will provide a personal barcode to each farmer containing data on the number of cows, history of each cow , whether any cows are being treated with veterinary treatment, etc for traceability.
Before receiving milk, samples are taken to test the levels of fat and protein content, total solid, antibiotic residues, PH, alcohol test, temperature of milk and somatic cell count. The results of the tests are provided to the farmer and used as a basis for setting the basic price of milk/l.
The collected milk is put into storage tank through plate cooler and deliver to manufacturers using milk tankers by milk cooperative.
Regularly veterinarians will check the animal health and provide sanitation and hygienic training to farmers.

1. In my opinion, maintaining the required temperature of milk during transportation from farms to factory is the most difficult part. In my country, normally the distance is not the problem, because raw milk collecting centers are located not far from the factories. But traffic jam is the main factor that might increase the delivery time and the temperature of milk correspondingly.
2. In Vietnam, small-scaled farms with 10-30 cows are popular. Twice per day, farmers bring cans of milk to the collecting centers, where milk is received, preliminarily checked, cooled down and stored. Then milk is transported to the factories by insulated tank trucks. This two-step transportation increases the food safety risk, since milk is not cooled down immediately after milking. Pathogenic microorganisms may grow rapidly and produce toxins, which can not be deactivated by further heat treatment and cause foodborne illnesses. Moreover, hand milking might also affect to the quality of milk, if the farmers do not follow the hygienic standard procedures of hand milking. To reduce the risk, producers and authorities should do the training for the farmers regularly, so that they aware of how important food safety is and how to keep the good quality of milk from their sides, such as proper sanitize hands and teats, transport milk to collecting centers as soon as possible, ... In addition, quality control and testing at collecting centers and on arrival at the factory play key role to make sure that raw milk meets all the requirements of our national standards.

Q1. As experienced importing UHT milk out of Australia there are always rejects when we receive the milk, because of some cartons got wetted during ship transport.
The main cause here is the temperature + humidity change inside the containers during voyage as sea temperature changes most of the time. Where we always experienced irregular and unproportioned dessicant bags against the total number of milk cases placed per container. Hopefully we as importers should be given a formulation or a standard value or number of dessicant bags proportioned to the whole content of the container to avoid recurrence of this issue.
Q2. Very true! If collected by tankers we are always guaranteed of the quality procedures done but if transported like here in our place we are always in serious trouble as we cannot always say that those milk are guaranteed free from all the pathogenic microbes and say that these local farmers have their standards or food safety controls. To avoid these issues I think this is the role of the local FDA to set the guidelines and make actual audits, farm visits, etc.

1. The temperature of the environment is very crucial in our country, the Philippines. We have to adjust the schedule of the delivery so as to not affect the quality of the food to be transported since most of the trucking are not temperature controlled. Still, the temperature of the environment cannot be controlled, we just assume the temperature per time of day.

2. Using temperature-controlled tankers is the best way however, not all countries have this.