The days of buying a gallon of milk only to have to drink it in 10 days may soon be a thing of the past. An Australian food company says it has patented a process that will keep refrigerated milk fresh for up to 60 days, according to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
The company — Naturo — has worked with food safety officials in Australia to ensure the process meets the current standards that require milk to be pasteurized.
“This has the potential to provide a very long shelf life fresh milk product that will allow fresh milk to go to markets that may have been previously unachievable with regular pasteurization,” said Andrew Wilson, a compliance manager for Dairy Food Safety Victoria which regulates the dairy industry in Victoria, Australia.
Typically, milk is pasteurized by heating it to a high temperature to kill any bacteria that could cause sickness. The new process achieves that without heating the milk up.
Naturo CEO Jeff Hastings says the process was developed over the course of five years and verified their process over the last two years. Hastings says the new process will make milk more accessible to areas of the world that have trouble –either geographically or financially — making milk available at an affordable price.
“By increasing the shelf life of a product it certainly opens up opportunities to different markets,” Hastings said.”Freight’s quite expensive by air. I know Norco’s exported milk to China, fresh drinking milk, and it’s quite a difficult process with the short shelf life of the product.”
While he didn’t detail exactly what’s different about this new process, Hastings said it’s not as harsh on the milk and gives a purer flavor.
“It provides a far more gentle and minimal processing technique that does not rely on heat to kill the bugs, if you like, in the milk that is at the core of pasteurization,” Mr Hastings said before going on to say “It’s got the taste of that old raw milk, that milk from the vat. Flavor to it.”
The Queensland government committed $250,000 to help scale the operation and Hastings says he’s scouting sites for a production facility. The first facility would be capable of producing 10 million liters of milk per year.
Source: Durr, M – Mlive
