MILWAUKEE — With buying from small, local, family-run farms becoming more popular, the results of a new study from Wisconsin could be surprising: It found that milk from big dairies is cleaner than that from small ones.
Lead researcher Steve Ingham said he did the study because he wanted to see whether there was a link between milk quality and the size of a dairy farm. He said the results cast doubt on the perception that big dairies can't matcher smaller ones in terms of quality.
"Certainly, the small-is-better blanket statement doesn't appear to be true," said Ingham, who started the study when he was a food science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and is now a food safety division administrator at the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection.
But a group that represents small farms said the study was irrelevant because of the way it defined milk quality. It looked at the amount of certain cells and bacteria in milk, which are factors agriculture inspectors use to evaluate cows' health and farms' cleanliness.
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