The Quality Milk Alliance, which is dedicated to reducing antibiotic use among dairy cows by half and mastitis by a third within five years. The alliance is a partnership among Michigan State University, Florida A&M, Penn State, and Mississippi State.
Dr. Ruben Martinez of the Julian Samora Research Insitute at MSU (Head table) with Dr. Marizel S. Davila Figueroa (left of Dr. Martinez) convened the group as snow fell outside the window during a focus group in Michigan. The succeeding photos show the QMA team during a farm visit in Florida. Members of the QMA hosted sessions with dairy farm owners/managers and employees.
Dr. Ray Mobley of Florida A&M and Dr. Sowerby (right) confer about the farm visit.The overall goal of this project is to develop and evaluate anintegrated extension program to help overcome human behavioral barriers to heimplementation of mastitis control practices on dairy farms. The long-term objective is toenhance global food security, dairy food quality, and food safety by reducing mastitis and antimicrobial use on U.S dairy farms. Our project objectives are aimed at improving the environmental quality and sustainability of natural resources of U.S. agriculture by:1)addressing a high priority species-specific disease (dairy cattle mastitis) of greatimportance to animal agriculture and 2) delivering an extension-based program for the reduction of mastitis and antimicrobial use, which will increase the efficiency of on-farmresources, economic viability, and improve the quality of life for dairy farmers andsociety as a whole. This project represents a focused regional approach as a first steptowards expansion into a national program.
This project is supported by Agriculture and Food Research Initiative Competitive Grant no. 2013-68004-20439 from the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture
No comments:
Post a Comment