MilkGuard · A continuous milk disinfection system for calf feeding on-farm

The problem: Dairy farms are continuously aiming at increasing milk yield per cow in the herd. Calf early life nutrition dictatestheir development. Farmers feed a variety of liquid feeds including milk and milk replacers. The state-of-the-art method toreduce 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 containmeasurable amounts of bacteria and the overall procedure is time- and energy-demanding, which hampers wide applicationamongst small and medium dairy farms.The solution: We at Calvex have developed the milkGUARD solution, which enables the safe employment of optimumnutrition for calves, i.e. natural milk, free of pathogens. The milkGUARD solution combines state-of-the-art methods for fastkilling of pathogens in natural milk. In a three-stage continuous process it disinfects milk with an efficacy of >99.99%. Byproviding a system that avoids indirect heating elements and works in continuous, we expect to reduce the operating coststo dairy farmers when treating milk for calf-feeding, offering 77% net savings when compared to conventional on-farmpasteurizers.The market: Milk is the EU's main agricultural product in terms of value – approx. 15% of agricultural output – with 160million tonnes of cow’s milk produced in 2014. The EU milk processing industry is a pillar of the European economy, whichcontributes positively to the EU trade balance, bringing over €10 billion surplus. The implementation of the innovation projectwill place Calvex in a strong position to exploit a market potential over five years exceeding €83 million.