An invitation to be the keynote speaker at the National Mastitis Council Annual Sessions in Charlotte, North Carolina, last week rapidly refocused my attention on animal welfare issues. In my presentation, I told the audience that the very first job I did in the dairy industry in 1972 was to write to every dairy farm in Scotland giving details of the individual somatic cell counts for its herd, compared with the national average, and estimating the financial loss to the farm as a result of yield reduction. The figures in some of the letters had staggered me. I couldn't believe the sums involved - even for poor performers just to get to the average. So I formed the view in my very first week of employment in the dairy industry that the secret to profitable dairy farming was a low SCC.
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