Nicole Martin, PhD
It’s been a busy few months here in the Milk Quality Improvement Program which means we have several new peer-reviewed publications out in the Journal of Dairy Science and JDS Communications. Find brief summaries of these papers below, as well as links to the open-access articles online.
In the first study, Butyric acid-producing bacterial spore levels in conventional raw milk vary by farm, we report levels of butyric acid-producing bacterial (BAB) spores in raw milk collected from 7 similarly managed conventional dairy farms. These BAB spores can be quite a problem for farmers and cheese manufacturers’, causing a defect called late blowing that renders the product unsaleable after ~60 days of aging. Despite the similarities in management across the farms in our study, the levels of BAB spores differed a great deal from farm to farm. Read more about this study in JDS Communications https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666910222001351
The second article, Culture-independent bacterial cell extraction from fluid milk and oat-based beverage for basic qualitative microscopy, outlines a rapid, practical culture-independent method for quickly visualizing bacterial cells in fluid milk and other products. This method was developed because butterfat and protein in the milk matrix make microscopic visualization of bacterial cells challenging. We use an extraction technique that eliminates these components to allow for rapid diagnosis of bacterial contamination. Read more about our method and its uses in our JDS Communications paper https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666910222001582
Lastly, our invited review paper, Redefining raw milk quality—Evaluation of raw milk microbiological parameters to ensure high-quality processed dairy products, discusses the primary groups of microbial contaminants in raw milk and their implications on processed dairy product quality. This review further calls for a three-tiered approach to redefining raw milk quality using i) process control testing, ii) monitoring, and, iii) troubleshooting. Read our full review in the Journal of Dairy Science https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S002203022300005X
