First poster session held at 1983 Annual Meeting The Technology Transfer session was initiated in 1983 at the NMC 22nd Annual Meeting. The objectives were to share methods shown effective in bringing about adoption of NMC information and to communicate new ideas and concepts that may assist mastitis control. Since then, over 1,000 posters have been presented at NMC meetings.
milk sources with SCCs below 400,000 cells per milliliter. Also, the EU plans to interpret the rule as meaning that each individual farm involved be below 400,000. Other foreign and domestic buyers may put equally stringent regulations in place. Looking ahead, even a 400,000 upper limit may not satisfy all buyers. One fluid milk processor in the US wants its milk to contain no more than 250,000 cells per milliliter. One strong point of our industry’s quality program is absence of any drug residues in milk. It is necessary for us to use medicine to treat our animals when they are not healthy. But no milk that has a drug residue is used for human consumption. This is especially important with current human-health concerns about some bacteria becoming resistant to some antibiotics. In the US, every tanker truckload of milk that arrives at a dairy plant is screened for the presence of antibiotic residues. The number of positive truckloads has been declining steadily for many years – in 2010, it was 802 out of 3.2 million loads sampled or 0.025 percent. Any milk testing positive is deposed of. Milk quality also is important because mastitis likely is our industry’s most costly disease. A study of five New York dairy farms put the cost of each clinical case of mastitis at $179. That included $115 through milk loss, $14 for greater death loss, and $50 attributed to treatment-associated costs. Pam Ruegg at the University of Wisconsin cites an estimate that subclinical mastitis costs the US dairy industry $1 billion per year. This would be due to lost milk production and lost milk quality premiums. Finally, producing milk of the highest quality possible simply is the right thing to do. It is right for the health and safety of consumers. It is right for dairy producers as business owners. And it is right for the animals under our care.
50 Years of Milk Quality
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