Applying artificial neural networks as a test to detect milk fraud by whey addition

Abstract

This study aimed to employ Artificial Neural Networks to classify milk samples from routine analysis of a dairy company in order to identify adulteration by whey addition. The samples were prepared by mixing the milk with different whey concentrations (0, 1, 5, 10, and 20%), which were then analyzed for temperature, fat content, solids-non-fat, bulk density, protein, lactose, minerals, freezing point, conductivity, and pH, for a total of 167 assays. Out of these, 101 were used to train the network, 33 for validation, and 33 to test the artificial neural network. The best classification was obtained using a radial basis function neural network. k-means algorithm was used to obtain the network center, k-nearest was used to define the receptive fields, and the pseudo-inverse method was used to define the weights of the output layer. The best result was found with a network with 10 neurons in the input layer, 40 neurons in the hidden layer, and two neurons in the output layer, achieving over 95% accuracy in classification. The classification methodology using artificial neural networks has strong potential to be applied in interpreting data from routine analysis in dairy companies in order to classify milk adulterated with whey and, later, confirm the result using official methodologies.