Mastitis in dairy production

Book excerpt: Worldwide, mastitis is still one of the most important diseases in the dairy sector. Being a multifactorial disease, caused by multiple pathogens, control remains a difficult issue. Mastitis not only affects the health of milk-producing animals, having consequences for the profitability of dairy farms, it also affects the animal welfare. Moreover, mastitis negatively influences the milk quality having consequences for the dairy processing industry. In other words: mastitis affects a large part of the dairy production chain. Due to ongoing scientific effort, insight in mastitis in the context of increasingly complex farming systems, is improving. This insight leads to better methods to control mastitis, either by prevention or by adequate measures (e.g. therapy) when a cow (or goat or sheep) gets mastitis. This book reflects the current knowledge from all over the world on mastitis as it was presented during the 4th IDF International Mastitis Conference, held in June 2005 in Maastricht, the Netherlands. The papers of the 115 oral presentations and the 13 keynote presentations are reflecting not only the current knowledge of mastitis control but are also giving ideas for future solutions for control measures.