The microbiological quality of pasteurized milk sold by automatic vending machines

Abstract

Recently, Greek dairy farmers organized in cooperatives launched the sale of pasteurized milk via AVM and this study reports on the microbiological quality of this product. The data show that AVM milk is sold at proper refrigeration temperatures and meets the quality standards of pasteurized milk throughout the manufacturer's specified shelf-life. However, based on the microbiological indicators tested, the keeping quality of the tested prepackaged, retail samples of pasteurized milk at the end of shelf-life upon storage under suboptimal refrigeration temperature (8°C) was better.