Quality of raw milk in Kerman province

BACKGROUND: Microbiological and chemical qualities ofmilk are among the most important issues in public health.OBJECTIVES:Although there are a few published studies whichhave been conducted in south east of Iran this study wasperformed to investigate quality of raw milk delivered to a dairyindustry company Kerman Province. METHODS:Atotal of 109raw milk samples were collected at the time of delivering to thecompany. All the samples were transferred to the food lab ofVeterinary School for total counting and psychotropic andStaphylococcus aureus counting. The chemical contents,residues of microbial inhibitors and Beta Lactam antibioticsresidues were evaluated by Lactostar, Copan kit and Beta startest, respectively, and somatic cells were counted by a cellcounter. RESULTS: Based on the comparison with nationalstandard criteria, only 26 out of 109 samples (23.8; 95% CI: 16.2-33.0) were at standard limits in terms of all the factors. Alargenumber of out-of-standard sample (50 out of 83), were in contrastwith the defined criterion due to low protein. CONCLUSIONS:Classification of the samples based on all the defined criteriawithout considering protein content showed that the mainproblem of the milk was its low protein percent.