• Patricia Munsch-Alatossava, Abdul Ghafar, and Tapani Alatossava.
• Department of Food and Environmental Sciences, P.O. Box 66, FIN-00014 University of Helsinki, Finland. patricia.munsch@helsinki.fi.
• Int J Mol Sci. 2013 Jan 1;14(3):5668-85.

AbstractFor different reasons, the amount of food loss for developing and developed countries is approximately equivalent. Altogether, these losses represent approximately 1/3 of the global food production. Significant amounts of pasteurised milk are lost due to bad smell and unpleasant taste. Currently, even under the best cold chain conditions, psychrotolerant spore-forming bacteria, some of which also harbour virulent factors, limit the shelf life of pasteurised milk. N2 gas-based flushing has recently been of interest for improving the quality of raw milk. Here, we evaluated the possibility of addressing bacterial growth in pasteurised milk during cold storage at 6 °C and 8 °C. Clearly, the treatments hindered bacterial growth, in a laboratory setting, when N2-treated milk were compared to the corresponding controls, which suggests that N2-flushing treatment constitutes a promising option to extend the shelf life of pasteurised milk.

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