Iodine is a trace mineral that is present naturally in many foodstuffs and is essential for normal thyroid function in humans. It is often added to salt as a preventative of iodine deficiency. Iodine can be found in bovine milk and concentration levels vary widely based on seasonality, feed and animal treatments used on farm by dairy farmers.

Variations in iodine levels between farms and seasons is problematic in the manufacture of nutritional powders such as infant formula. With very tight nutritional specifications to achieve in finished product, too little iodine can be compensated for by the addition of iodine as an ingredient, however too much iodine will result in out of specification product. This can be very costly as out of specification product can not be used for its manufactured purpose.

This project will require the development of an iodine mass balance tool using available literature, audits of animal treatments, feed, farming systems and genetics with some limited validation testing to generate an iodine prediction model. The intention of the model is to minimise the production of out of specification nutritional powders.