Author
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Tomasula, Peggy |
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Konstance, Richard |
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Submitted to: Journal of Dairy Science
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal Publication Acceptance Date: 10/20/2003 Publication Date: 5/1/2004 Citation: Tomasula, P.M., Konstance, R.P. 2004. The survival of foot-and-mouth disease virus in raw and pasteurized milk and milk products. Journal of Dairy Science. 87:1115-1121. Interpretive Summary: The foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) virus is not a public health threat, but is highly contagious to cloven-footed animals such as cows. Recently, there was an outbreak of FMD virus in England and other European countries. During an outbreak, the virus can be shed into milk and can be a source for spread of the disease on farms; to animals fed milk and milk products; or from farm to farm. Pasteurization, a process in which milk is rapidly heated to temperatures at or over 72C for at least 15 seconds, has been shown in the literature to reduce the amount of FMD virus in milk or eliminate it completely. In this study, these data were reassessed in view of the recent outbreak in Europe. Even though FMD virus has not appeared in the US, and Europe is now free of the virus, the effectiveness of pasteurization in destroying the FMD virus in milk needs to be monitored. Technical Abstract: The foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) virus is not a threat to public health, but is highly contagious to cloven-footed animals. The literature reports that FMD virus has a higher thermal resistance in milk than other viruses. The purpose of this paper is to review experiments that were performed to determine the thermal resistance of FMD virus in milk and milk products- assess the experimental techniques used to acquire the data; calculate thermal destruction parameters from these data where possible:and, evaluate the applicability of the literature data to continuous pasteurization processes. It is concluded that the higher thermal resistance reported for the FMD virus may be attributed to the experimental methods used to obtain the data. In those experiments: milk was either infected with titers of viruses greater than that of naturally infected milk; or, milk that was not naturally infected was used; and/or the batch flow systems used to obtain the data may not have simulated all of the conditions that would be imposed on the virus in milk if it were pasteurized in a continuous unit. Additional studies that account for conditions encountered in continuous flow pasteurization systems are recommended so that more accurate thermal resistance data may be obtained. |
