Milk – a review on its synthesis, composition, and quality assurance in dairy industry

The aim of this paper is to briefly present some literature data with respect to histochemical mechanisms of milk synthesis, its composition in human useful active principles, and its quality assurance throughout its processing. Milk is one of the main foodstuffs consumed by humans, its synthesis at the udder's level being based on synthesis and selective filtration processes using a preformed biological material which is circulated through circulatory system. Milk nutritional value is certainly higher than its each component value, and even the necessary components for milk elaboration are coming from blood, between these biological fluids are significant compositional differences. Milk contamination risks are various, from those phisicals (foreign subjects such as manure, feed, dust, pieces of broken glass, strands of hair, wood, plastic or metal chips), to chemicals (antibiotic, hormone, pesticides, detergent, or heavy metal residues), to those microbiological ones (germs, somatic cells). In foodstuff industry, and particularly in that of dairy products, the hazard analysis and critical control points (HACCP) concept guarantees foods' quality due to their entire chain supervision, "from farm to fork".