Microbial decontamination of milk and dairy products

Despite advances in dairy production and processing methods, outbreaks of illness associated with milk and milk products continue to occur. At the same time there has been a resurgence of interest by consumers in organic, ';slow' and ';raw' foods. To offset issues related to food safety and to comply with the demand for these fresh foods, there is an urgent need to develop novel processing concepts that provide effective public health protection with minimal treatments to retain nutrient and flavour characteristics of the product. In the first part of this chapter all milk and dairy pathogens of relevance are discussed with particular focus on their relative risk ranking. The second part of the chapter reviews the features and potential of conventional and most promising emerging preservation techniques for pathogen mitigation in milk and dairy products, highlighting the advantages of combined decontamination strategies and indicating hurdle processing as the most efficacious approach.