The rise of production throughout the last 2-3 years was accomplished by higher milk yields. Securing the demand for milk and milk products of high quality must gain priority. The basis for continuous quality registration and protection are a well organized milk recording system, sufficient cooling capacities and good transportation possibilities, a system for the education and counselling of milk producers and, of course, healthy animals, which are given high quality food. The topical production circumstances have to be analyzed separately for every country, since the extent of the changes in agricultural production differs among the countries of Eastern Europe. Countries, in which the production structure was maintained, i.e. traditional small farms as well as large farms, had fewer problems in keeping up the agricultural production.
Examples are Poland, Slovenia and Hungary.
In other countries, i.e. Bulgaria and Romania, the old agricultural structure has been totally destroyed. In Russia, the Ukraine and Belorus one tries to keep up the old large farms, but a lack of financial flow has a negative effect on the output of the production and the quality of the agricultural products. It is noticeable that quality protection of the product milk is already an important component of milk production in those countries, which have kept their old production structure. Effective milk recording and extension systems are being developed or are already established and a great part of the produced milk undergoes a controlling mechanism. Payment for milk is adjusted to quality characteristics with bonuses for milk of high quality.