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…

Why Sample and Test Blog Image
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The Process of Sampling and Testing and the Importance of Starting with Results in Mind

ByJack van der Sanden

In the world of food safety in the dairy industry, one of the key pillars is the process of sampling and testing. And we do test a lot! Starting on the farm, we test from the cows to the pens to the holding tanks and all the way to the tanker. Then at the dairy plant,…

Sanitary Survey Sampling
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Leveraging Sanitary Survey Sampling for In-Process Quality Control

ByRuth Petran

In a typical food plant, appropriate preventive controls are implemented to address the inevitable hazards from a variety of sources to ensure that the resulting products are safe.  As part of these programs, we traditionally think of sampling ingredients or finished products to help verify the effectiveness and thorough implementation of these controls. Many food companies…

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 Importance of Hazard Analysis
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Importance of Hazard Analysis to Ensure Food Safety with Emerging Food Trends

ByRuth Petran

The food market has transformed significantly in recent years, from the year-round availability of fresh produce to emerging niche products like cell-grown meats to online food ordering and delivery services. Consumers have not only created a demand for alternative food options but have been able to directly engage with food manufacturers, which makes the importance…

Preventing Post-Process Contamination
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Preventing Post-Process Contamination: Don’t Lose Sight of the Basics

ByRuth Petran

With the World Health Organization estimating that one in ten people get sick and more than 400,000 die from foodborne illnesses each year, a public health focus aimed at decreasing this incidence is needed.  The primary goal of the management of risks associated with food is to protect public health by controlling them as effectively…

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…

Effective Micro Program
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Effective Micro Program: Understanding the Microbiological Tests (Part 4)

ByNeil Bogart

Throughout this series on dairy microbiological testing, we have discussed the types of micro tests that can be used to enumerate the classifications of bacteria we are concerned with in fluid milk processing. The first two articles discussed Gram-negative bacteria in raw milk and the effects of Gram-positive heat resistant thermoduric/psychrotrophic spore formers (HRSF) on…

Micro Testing for Post-pasteurization Contamination
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Micro Testing for Post-pasteurization Contamination (Part 3)

ByNeil Bogart

The first article in this series, Raw Milk Dairy Micro Testing, focused on Gram-negative bacteria in raw milk with the Preliminary Incubation (PI) Count and Fresh Standard Plate Count (SPC) tests. The second article, The Effects of Gram-positive HRSF Bacteria on Fluid Milk Shelf Life, discussed another classification of bacteria that was not known as…