The Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs Appeal Tribunal will hear Denby’s appeal Dec. 18 on whether or not milk tested at his farm had a high somatic cell count. When testing showed unusually high counts earlier this year, Denby was left searching his head after his own investigation with his own veterinarian couldn’t find a problem. So, he began taking his own tests and said an independent lab revealed lower somatic counts than those reported by DFO. The DFO takes four tests per month and found the somatic cell count too high based on weighed average.

Denby said that at his request, since April, his DFO grader has been sealing and signing a second milk sample, which Denby had tested at Myer’s Laboratories in Cornwall.

“For every tank of milk I shipped off this farm we had dual samples,” he said. DFO has penalized him more than $5,000 for a high somatic cell count three months in a row but he says that high count is impossible. He said his veterinarian, Chris Green, will support his argument at the tribunal. “We were never in the penalty range, never when we did an independent test.”

Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs director of the food inspection branch, Dr. Thomas Baker, told Farmers Forum earlier this year that OMAFRA and the laboratory in Guelph “worked together to correct the problem” of testing that arose more than two years ago but is confident now the lab does “provide quality and safe milk testing services.”