Biopreservation of Milk and Dairy Products

Abstract

Milk may act as vehicle for human pathogenic bacteria (reviewed by Claeys et al. 2013). Pasteurization of milk before human consumption or for the manufacture of dairy products is often required or recommended. Pasteurizarion will decrease the background spoilage microbiota, but it will not yield a sterile product. Some traditional, highly appreciated fermented dairy foods are still made from raw milk, and there is an ongoing debate on the benefits of consuming raw milk versus pasteurized milk (Claeys et al. 2013). According to foodborne disease reports from different industrialized countries, milk and milk products are implicated in 1–5 % of the total bacterial foodborne outbreaks, with 39.1 % attributed to milk, 53.1 % to cheese and 7.8 % to other milk products (De Buyser et al. 2001; Claeys et al. 2013). Bacteriocins seem an attractive approach to improve the safety of milk and dairy products (especially in those made from raw milk), and at the same time may offer some potential technological applications such as in acceleration of cheese ripening (Table 5.1). The antimicrobial effects of bacteriocins and/or their produced strains have been investigated both in raw milks and in several types of dairy products.