A firm and constant policy was established by the Israeli Dairy Board in the 90s with the aim of improving milk quality. Economic incentives were set in order to lower the somatic cell count in the milk supplied to the industry and threshold of price categories was progressively lowered alon years. The farmer's response caused the average SCC (annuak average for all farms) to decrease from 428,000/ml in 1995 to 249,000/ml in 2003.