The industry considers milk with an SCC of under 250,000 to be quality milk. The pressures and challenges of mastitis cause the SCC levels to increase significantly. Healthy cows should have an SCC in the 50,000 range per Cornell University and others. The fact is that very few cows consistently yield a low SCC and even the universities have little success in achieving the quality levels they claim are readily achievable. Cornell University refuses to make their SCC public so no one knows what the quality is of their processed milk.

The Michigan State University herd is the only university herd to achieve the desired quality levels but that has come at a very high price for the cows. The Michigan State University cull rate is over 45%. That means if you are a cow in that herd your odds of surviving more than 2 years is nearly zero as they replace nearly half their herd each year.