Bovine Mastitis and Post-Dipping: A Review of the Milk Quality

The largest commercial cattle herd in the world is in Brazil. It is estimated that there are 177 million animals, of which 35 million located represent dairy cattle. Dairy activity plays an important role in the Brazilian economy, however it is noticed that the problems related to the poor quality of milk occur due to numerous factors, among them, the lack of knowledge of the importance of hygiene of milking, equipment and milkers, in addition to the acquisition of healthy animals, diagnosis and control of mastitis. Mastitis is a pathology of great economic loss for dairy cattle worldwide. The development of an effective mastitis control program in the herd implies some important measures. In particular for producing milk with quality and quantity, a healthy udder is essential and, for this, the utmost care must be taken in the pre and post-dipping. Some quality parameters are increasingly used to detect flaws in management practices, serving as a reference in the valorization of raw materials. Due to the complexity of these factors, some methods of checking milk quality were developed, such as microbiological examination, California Mastitis Test (CMT) and Somatic Cell Count (SCC).