**1. Introduction**

Like other agricultural sectors presently challenged by environmental constraints, the dairy sector is also pushed to move towards environmental sustainability and is urged to change practices.

Despite alarming predictions, the OECD-FAO outlook for the period 2018–2027 projects an increase by 22% of the world milk production; India and Pakistan are expected to jointly account for 32% of the global milk production; for Europe, the estimations of global exports of dairy commodities are in favour of 27–29% increase for the same time period [1]. In Africa, the consumption of milk and dairy products is also expected to increase due to the population and urbanisation increase and due to economic development [2].

If processed products, like cheese or butter, still dominate the consumption of dairy products in the developed world, fresh dairy products are mostly preferred in developing regions [1].

Dairy farms around the world still show a highly contrasted picture: milk is either produced in small holder farms, where it is mainly served for family consumption, or in large modern dairy farms equipped with rotary milking parlour or milking robots designed for up to thousands of cows.

However, irrespective of the type of farming or the local environmental constraints, raw milk as a particularly rich media is highly perishable. The quality of raw milk largely determines the quality of products manufactured at the dairy; but, milk also constitutes a health issue if consumed raw, especially.
