Prevalence of Bacillus in Heat treated milk and Infant food

Document Type : Research articles

Authors

1 Department of Food Hygiene, Fayoum University Hostels, Fayoum , Egypt

2 Department of Milk Hygiene, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Beni Suef University, Beni Suef, Egypt

Abstract

Bacillus species are widely distributed in nature and could be recognized as an important food contaminant in several types of raw food and dairy products. This spore forming pathogen can tolerate different types of heat treatment during dairy processing. Therefore, monitoring presence of this pathogen in dairy products seems to be of great importance. The bacteriological investigation in this study revealed that mean values of Bacillus species count in the examined one hundred and fifty samples fifty each of UHT milk, pasteurized milk and infant food (milk based cereal) which were chosen at random from various supermarkets and dairy stores located throughout the city of Fayoum in Egypt were 5.9 × 102 ± 0.33 × 103, 1.2 × 105 ± 0.57 × 105 and 4.1 × 103 ± 0.79 × 103 (cfu / ml or g), respectively. The presence of Bacillus species is objectionable as it was implicated in various foodborne outbreaks, spoilage and responsible for defects such as sweet curdling and bitterness in dairy products.

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