Impact of farm size on milk quality in the Brazilian dairy industry according to the seasons of the year.Ciência Rural, v.47, n.11, 2017.
INTRODUCTIONMilk produced in Brazil has been seen as having poor quality because it is associated with the large number of small farms and because of the absence of hygiene practices. However, there are few studies proving or quantifying the lower quality of the milk produced on small properties, as described by ALLORE et al. (1997), where they affirm that smaller herds would be more affected by higher levels of somatic cell count (SCC) than larger ones (BATTAGLINI et al., 2013; FRANÇA et al., 2017). Yet, consultants from several regions report the existence of small farms producing milk with high quality, or no correlation between farm range production and milk quality (BORGES et al., 2013;INGHAM et al., 2011), which reinforces the importance of studies tracing the quality profile of Brazilian dairy farms.