Developing protective culture-based approaches to enhance the safety of raw milk cheese

The overall goal of this project is to characterize the antimicrobial activity of protective cultures and their combinations to optimize their use as preventive controls in the production of raw milk cheese. This project will benchmark, and provide reference in the scientific literature for, the use of protective cultures as practical preventive controls for Listeria monocytogenes and enterohemorrhagic Escherichia coli (EHEC) in the production of cheese. At the same time, fundamental new knowledge will be obtained that will advance our understanding of the impact of protective cultures on cheesemaking cultures and will identify potential synergistic combinations to control pathogens. We plan to attain the goal of this project by pursuing the following specific objectives:Identify compatible combinations of commercial protective and cheesemaking cultures.Determine the antimicrobial activity of commercial protective cultures against L. monocytogenes and EHEC.Determine the effect of commercial protective cultures on L. monocytogenes and EHEC during the manufacture and storage of soft-ripened cheese manufactured from raw milk.