A consensus and controversies over the index organism for milk pasteurization: A brief review

Abstract

Pasteurization, named after French scientist Louis Pasteur, was introduced in milk in the late 1800s. The First law for pasteurization of milk was passed in the year 1908 in Chicago. The batch process of pasteurization (low-temperature-long-time/ LTLT process) was developed in the initial phase to kill Mycobacterium tuberculosis. During the early period, some of the countries used M. tuberculosis while the others used Coxiella burnetii as an index organism for pasteurization of milk, although C. burnetii was more heat resistant than M. tuberculosis. The current definition given by Codex Alimentarius Commission points towards both the organism. Initially pasteurization conditions were set as 61 oC for 30 minutes with reference to M. tuberculosis, but later it was changed to 62.8 °C for 30 min or 71.6 °C for 15 seconds with reference to C. burnetii.