There was a further drop in pick-up tanker milk samples testing positive for antibiotics in the United States last year . . . 445 out of 3.2 million samples, or 0.014 percent, were positive. This represents an all-time low from last year's previous record of 0.017 percent. Of course, not one of those 445 tanks of milk ever hit the human food chain.
The data from this ongoing annual report published on behalf of the National Conference on Interstate Milk Shipments (NCIMS) is separate from the yet-to-be published report on antibiotic residues from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The industry is still in a holding pattern waiting for the results of that FDA investigation.
Back to the NCIMS report published in February, that 0.014 percent positive status basically means that just 1 in every 7,187 bunk tanks of milk was positive for antibiotic residues. Looking at the graph, the most recent national test results represent tremendous improvement from 1996 when 1 in every 832 tanks was hot.
In running the safety checks, milk samples were checked for 10 different groups of families or individual drugs. Overall, 26 testing methods were used to analyze the samples for drugs.
