SOMATIC CELLS AND MILK HEALTH

Abstract

The quality of milk as an aliment (functional aliment) and finding the modifications that come along with mamitis as quickly as possible, but also other udder diseases that produce udder dysfunctions, was and remains a major problem of the medical, medical – veterinary and other domains’ research. This supposes elaborating some high sensibility tests, which, through the investigation of a small quantity of milk and in little time, would offer cert information regarding its health, respectively the possibility of early diagnosis in cases of mamitis or other abnormal udder states. After signaling the somatic cells in milk with almost a century before, they were and still are considered among the milk’s small components. Their importance for the udder health and therefore of milk milk health was revealed later, but is at present among the hygienic quality indicators of public consumption destined milk. The cytomorphologic study on the lactosediment stained May Grunwald Giemsa and somatic cell count by the ISO-13366-1 method made on raw goat and sheep milk, collected during 3 lactations, permitted us to establish with enough precision the hygienic quality (health) of it. The somatic cell count is highly superior in these species compared to cow, in the majority of cases crossing the limit imposed by the European Community. After systemizing and analyzing the gathered data in function of the somatic cell count, lactating period and the cytomorphologic aspects, the diagnosis of mamitis and identification of germ carrier animals. The cytological configuration of lactosediment smears made possible differentiating the following milk categories: healthy, normal milk, milked and presented in hygienic conditions; microbiologically intensely polluted milk; milk from animals which are at the end of the lactation period or mammary pause and also milk from animals with chronic or subacute mastitis, clinically unexpressed, with germ carrier and eliminating animals.