Evaluation of Bulk Tank Milk Quality Based on Fuzzy Logic

Bulk Tank Milk (BTM) from all dairy farms is periodically tested for antibiotic residues and for bacterial contamination. Several guidelines have been proposed to interpret farm bulk tank milk bacterial counts. However the linguistic terms describing bulk tank milk quality or herd management status are rather vague or fuzzy such as excellent, good or unsatisfactory. The objective of this paper was to develop a set of fuzzy descriptors to evaluate bulk tank milk quality and herd's milking practice based on bulk tank milk microbiology test results. Thus, fuzzy logic based reasoning methodologies were developed based on fuzzy inference engine.