Quality of raw milk in Kerman province

ABSTRACT

Microbiological and chemical qualities of milk are among the most important issues in public health. Although there are a few published studies which have been conducted in south east of Iran this study was performed to investigate quality of raw milk delivered to a dairy industry company Kerman Province. A total of 109 raw milk samples were collected at the time of delivering to the company. All the samples were transferred to the food lab of Veterinary School for total counting and psychotropic and Staphylococcus aureus counting. The chemical contents, residues of microbial inhibitors and Beta Lactam antibiotics residues were evaluated by Lactostar, Copan kit and Beta star test, respectively, and somatic cells were counted by a cell counter. Based on the comparison with national standard 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. A large number of out-of-standard sample [50 out of 83], were in contrast with the defined criterion due to low protein. Classification of the samples based on all the defined criteria without considering protein content showed that the main problem of the milk was its low protein percent