Oral and Poster Abstracts

inspections, carried out by specifically trained technicians. The
check list focused on more than 300 parameters, divided in 5 general
sections, 6 specific sections for the different categories of animals
and one section called “indicators”, that focused on the animals
individual health status. These parameters have been evaluated on
the basis of specific limits defined in a manual for the technicians
and were classified as “conforming” or “non-standard (not
conforming)” referring to the law in force, or as “substandard”,
“adequate”, “good”, “excellent”, on the strength of the scientific
data available in the literature. The parameters not objectively
measurable (about 100) have been classified as “descriptive” and
thus not used in the analysis. The farms were classified as “small”
(less than 40 cows), “medium” (from 40 to 79 cows) and “big” (more
than 80 cows).The parameters included in the analysis were about
200 but only few of them (