Date:  July 2, 2010

Security System for Bulk Milk Transport- Fred Payne

Researchers at the University of Kentucky (UK) are very close to having a viable solution to the problems incurred by the manual methods currently used for securing milk during transport. Our milk transport security system will provide improved accuracy, traceability, efficiency, and security—significantly adding to the security infrastructure for bulk food transport.

In the modern food supply chain, bulk food handling and transportation security protocols are of great importance because of the potential for threats to public health. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has identified potential contamination of bulk milk as a focus area for security improvements. Within the dairy industry, existing protocols for security ensure consumer safety and product reliability; however, the manual methods currently used for securing milk during transport are manual, paper-intensive, and prone to errors.

A grant from the National Institute for Hometown Security in Somerset, Ky., funded a four-year project to develop a security system for bulk milk transport. Since January 2006, Chris Thompson, a senior agricultural regulatory specialist in the UK College of Agriculture, and I have led a team of researchers, including UK graduate and undergraduate students and researchers from the University of Louisville and Western Kentucky University, along with milk producers, processors, and transportation companies, to develop and optimize the milk transport security system to a pre-commercial state. The benefits of our development include improved data accuracy, superior traceability of the milk from the plant to the dairy farm, improved operational efficiency, increased productivity, and an increase in the information available to the dairy industry.

What it’s all about

The UK system consists of a handheld device, a data server, and a processor-based system (called the Transport Monitoring System, or TMS) installed on the milk transport tank. The handheld device and server operate similarly to the system that UPS uses for identifying package pickups using barcodes. In our system, the driver identifies each dairy farm using a barcode and enters data at each farm where milk is picked up. The TMS monitors the electronic locks on the tank, the vehicle’s GPS location, and the temperatures, and it automatically sends this information to the server via cell phone communications.

The first step in a bulk milk pickup is data collection at the farm. The milk truck driver inputs the required information about the collected milk into the handheld device (temperature, volume, results of antibiotic tests, etc.), and the data are uploaded to the server. The information is then organized into security sessions, and the information for each truckload of milk is identified with a unique security session number. The security of the transport tank is maintained from the beginning of the tanker wash cycle to unloading at the processing plant. The hardware system of the TMS consists of electronic locks, temperature sensors, a user interface, and an auxiliary power supply.

CAN (controller area network) communication is used on the TMS, with one controller circuit board communicating with several node circuit boards to gather data from the locks and temperature sensors. Security data (such as lock position, temperature, GPS location, and power usage) are collected at one-minute intervals and transmitted automatically to the server. Communication protocols have been developed for the transmission and synchronization of the milk and security data between the handheld device, the TMS, and the data server. A patent application on the concept of securing milk in a transport tanker has been submitted by the University of Kentucky Research Foundation.

After the milk has been unloaded at the processing plant, the data stored on the server can be viewed via an internet interface. Users can easily view, print, and download a variety of forms and reports. A multitude of trace searches can also be conducted. For example, it’s easy to assemble a list of all the dairy farms that contributed to given a silo of milk at the dairy processor.

Commercial testing by milk marketing agencies and transportation companies was performed on the system in New York State and Kentucky from September to December 2009. The program developed for the handheld device performed extremely well and received excellent comments on ease of use from the 14 milk haulers who used it. A fully instrumented milk truck was tested in the Kentucky test and proved that the synchronization of the computational devices performed as designed. Data for the test were stored on the server, and the server-based software demonstrated that milk could be traced back to the farm using the data collection system.

Overall, the milk transport security system developed at the University of Kentucky provides security, accountability, surveillance, and response features for bulk milk transport, and it contributes significantly to the U.S. national security infrastructure. A startup company, TranSecurity Systems, Inc., has been formed with the goal of commercially implementing the technology. TranSecurity Systems is currently in discussions with milk marketing agencies, transportation companies, and other interested parties in the milk industry as well as the bulk liquid food transport industry to determine appropriate system configurations to meet their functional requirements.

ASABE fellow Fred Payne is a professor in the Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering, University of Kentucky, Lexington, USA, fpayne@bae.uky.edu.

As featured in the ASABE - American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers magazine, July-August 2010

http://e-ditionsbyfry.com/Olive/ODE/RES/Default.aspx?href=RES/2010/07/01

In the photo below, Brain Luck demoonstrating the Milk Truck Security System