Blog Posts About Liquid Sampling Written by Our Subject Matter Experts (SMEs)
Preventing Post-Process Contamination: Don’t Lose Sight of the Basics
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…
Hygienic Sampling Practices Are Vital to Protecting Dairy Product Quality and Safety
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: Understanding the Microbiological Tests (Part 4)
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 (Part 3)
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…
Honoring Four Decades of Helping to Ensure Food Safety and Food Quality
On March 22, 2023, the QualiTru team met at the University of Minnesota’s Department of Food Science and Nutrition for an educational pilot plant tour led by Darrell Bigalke, founder of QualiTru Sampling Systems, dairy microbiologist, entrepreneur, and proud University of Minnesota alum. As part of the celebration of QualiTru’s 40th anniversary, the team had…
The Effects of Gram-positive HRSF Bacteria on Fluid Milk Shelf Life (Part 2)
The first article in this series, Raw Milk Micro Testing, focused on Gram-negative bacteria in raw milk with the Preliminary Incubation (PI) Count and Fresh Standard Plate Count (SPC) tests. In this second installment, I would like to discuss another classification of bacteria (Gram-positive HRSF Bacteria) that was not known as a major issue in fluid…
