Correlation analysis between the range of conformity to gap and milk safety

Abstract

Food safety basically depends of the manner of production of primary goods. Milk is an important primary good for dairy products and its quality is the main factor to guarantee quality and safety of milk derived products. The objective of this study was to evaluate if the adoption of the Good Agricultural Practices (GAP) could guarantee milk safety and the grade of correlation between the adoption of GAP and milk safety produced in farms from Itapetininga, SP. The evaluation of the GAP adoption used a checklist based on the Agricultural Ministry legal instruction nº 51 that was applied on those farms. At that time there were samples collected from those farms to analyze physical-chemical characteristics and Total Bacteria Count (TBC), Somatic Cell Count (SCC). Results showed that although the milk analyzed was according to legal standards, there was a weak correlation between GAP adoption and TBC. In conclusion, even thou the importance of the GPA adoption to improve mil quality, there are other factors that influence milk microbiological quality and should be considered.