Biofilms in Milking Equipment
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The Dirty Truth: How Biofilms in Milking Equipment May Fuel Mastitis in Dairy Cows and Threaten Dairy Hygiene

ByClarence Johnson

Biofilms, resilient bacterial communities encased in a self-produced matrix, pose a significant threat to dairy farming. These microbial formations develop on surfaces that are frequently exposed to moisture and organic material, making milking equipment an ideal breeding ground. Once established, biofilms are notoriously difficult to remove, resisting standard cleaning protocols and allowing pathogenic bacteria to…

Quorum Sensing and Biofilm Formation Blog Image
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Quorum Sensing and Biofilm Formation: The Impact on Food Safety and Quality

ByClarence Johnson

Quorum sensing and biofilm formation play a critical role in microbial contamination within food and dairy processing environments. Quorum sensing (QS), a bacterial communication system, is at the heart of biofilm formation, enabling bacteria within the biofilm to coordinate their actions and enhance their resistance to environmental threats. With the aid of quorum sensing, bacteria…

Yeast in Cheese Production - Little girl peeking through cheese whole
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Controlling Yeast in Cheese Production: Strategies for Quality Assurance

ByClarence Johnson

Yeast contamination is of minimal concern in fluid milk production, but its impact can be significant in cheese and fermented dairy products where unwanted yeast may alter flavor, texture, and overall product quality. Understanding the growth parameters and spoilage mechanisms of yeast in cheese production is key to developing effective control strategies. Process monitoring strategies…

Combat Microbial Spoilage Main Image
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Combat Microbial Spoilage: Ensuring Dairy Quality Assurance with QualiTru

ByClarence Johnson

The dairy industry faces the continuous challenge of maintaining the safety and quality of milk and its derivatives. Despite significant advancements in processing technologies, a 2018 paper in the Journal of Dairy Science reported that nearly half of all fluid milk products show evidence of post-pasteurization contamination with psychrotrophic or psychrotolerant spoilage organisms.1 This contamination primarily stems from…

Sterile VS Aseptic
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Sterile or Aseptic? Understanding the Difference

ByClarence Johnson

Ensuring the quality and safety of dairy and food products is the number one priority of processors, explaining why questions surrounding sterile or aseptic frequently enter into the conversation, especially when discussing equipment cleanliness and sampling or testing techniques. While the words sterile and aseptic are often used interchangeably, they are not, in fact, interchangeable….

Economics of Quality Assurance in Dairy Processing
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Economics of Quality Assurance in Dairy Processing

ByClarence Johnson

A cost-benefit analysis of a well-conceived and carefully sustained quality assurance program for dairy processing is hard to pin down. Every month, the costs associated with maintaining quality assurance jump off the profit and loss statement, but the benefits are much harder to decipher. Still, when evaluating the economics of quality assurance over the long…

Blog Image Hygienic Sampling
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Hygienic Sampling Practices Are Vital to Protecting Dairy Product Quality and Safety

ByClarence Johnson

Milk collected from the udders of healthy cows is almost sterile but microbial contaminants are introduced during milking, storage, processing, and distribution. Cleaning and sanitation failures allow contaminating organisms to accumulate in dairy processing equipment, potentially leading to the development of biofilms that can become a significant and persistent source of contamination. On the farm and…

cold-tolerent spore-forming bacteria
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Prevalence of Cold-tolerant Spore-forming Bacteria in the Milk Supply 

ByClarence Johnson

The shelf life of pasteurized fluid milk is challenged by bacterial contamination that enters the finished milk supply through two portals: a) contamination by Gram-negative psychrotrophic bacteria during processing after pasteurization; and b) contamination by Gram-positive spore-forming bacteria that enter primarily through the raw milk supply. In today’s processing environment, where post-pasteurization contamination is largely…