Crucial Role of Raw Milk Microbial Testing
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The Crucial Role of Raw Milk Microbial Testing in Producing High-Quality Dairy Products

ByMara Herschbach

The dairy industry globally strives to meet high-quality standards for processed products. One key to achieving this is raw milk microbial testing, a meticulous monitoring process that examines raw milk’s microbiological parameters. In this blog, we review the significance of these parameters, including somatic cell counts (SCC) and bacterial counts, and their direct impact on…

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…

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…

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…

The Effects of Gram-positive HRSF Bacteria on Fluid Milk Shelf Life
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The Effects of Gram-positive HRSF Bacteria on Fluid Milk Shelf Life (Part 2)

ByNeil Bogart

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…

Dairy Micro Testing
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Raw Milk Dairy Micro Testing (Part 1)

ByNeil Bogart

Why do you do it? What do the test results tell you? Is the test you use still a valid one? In part one of this dairy micro testing series, Raw Milk Dairy Micro Testing, I would like to take you on a journey through the development of some of the principal tests used in…

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…