Don't Cry Over Spoiled Milk, Incentivize Supply Chain For Longer Shelf Life

Research Provides Blueprint For Cost-effective, Sustainable Milk Production

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Too much milk gets pitched, something that was an issue long before these pandemic times of global food insecurity. One of every three gallons of milk was estimated to go to waste in America, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture data from the previous decade. A group of scientists, including one now at Washington University in St. Louis, used mathematical models to integrate knowledge from multiple disciplines — milk production and processing, microbiology and supply chain — thereby striving to attack a centuries-old problem: spoiled milk.

Their research, in particular, found two main strategies that could be used at the beginning of the milk supply chain – on the farm and in the processing plant — to prevent psychrotolerant (cold-growing,) spore-forming bacteria from contaminating and prematurely spoiling milk:

1. Premium payments such as bonuses (or penalties) based on lower (or higher) spoiling bacteria counts in raw milk;

2. Investing in spore-reduction technologies at the processing level.

Their study, concluding that enacting both strategies could improve some milk shelf life anywhere between a half-day to 13 days, was published July 8 in one of the Frontiers journals, Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems.