Adoption of milk safety practices: evidence from dairy farmers in Ethiopia

Abstract Background Foodborne zoonotic diseases caused by inadequate on-farm controls are a major global public health concern, despite dairy products' nutritional value and role in food security. To improve dairy safety on farms, it is critical to understand the factors that influence the adoption of safe milk production practices. The objective of this paper was to assess milk safety practices implemented on smallholder dairy farms and to identify factors associated with farm-level adoption of these practices by dairy farmers in Ethiopia. Methods A semi-structured questionnaire was used to collect primary data from 424 randomly selected dairy farmers across five districts in Ethiopia, with 410 of them being used in the analysis. The level of milk safety practices was developed based on the reported adoption of 45 recommended milk safety measures, which were grouped under animal health, milking hygiene, milk storage, and general hygienic practices. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used to describe and compare key variables, while factors associated with the adoption of milk safety practices under each group and the overall level of milk safety practices adopted were identified using truncated Poisson and ordinary least squares, respectively. Results Smallholder dairy farmers adopted 59% of the milk safety practices, with considerable variation across dairy farmers. Although the level of milk safety practices adoption does not significantly differ between the two zones, our finding uncovered that most of the factors associated with the adoption of milk safety practices significantly differ between zones. This demonstrates that there is a need for location-specific policy recommendations and strategies to improve the adoption of milk safety practices by dairy producers in Ethiopia. Households with more education, dairy farming experience, dairy production training, access to milk safety information, access to credit, and experience with milk safety inspections adopted significantly more milk safety measures. On the other hand, the number of lactating cows, distance from water and proportion of milk consumed at home were found to be negatively associated with milk safety practices adopted. Conclusions The findings of the study suggest that strengthening food safety inspections at the farm and improving regulatory enforcement, disseminating food safety information through different outlets and location-specific interventions are important to improve the adoption of milk safety practices in Ethiopia.