Boiling things isn’t guaranteed to make it safe, because sometimes bacteria produce toxins as a byproduct that are heat-stable, so if you kill the bacterial you can still get food poisoning if you drink it.
Couldn’t one invent a way more effective if more complicated heat-treatment cycle and a corresponding plant for performing it, and then ideally standardization to ensure this is always done this way before milk is sold for consumption?
No, the point is that bacteria can produce toxins in between a company packaging a product and a person receiving it and then boiling it themselves. Companies have to kill the bacteria prior to shipping it. It’s similar to canned foods for example, they put it in the can then heat up the can to kill the bacteria, then ship it, so it shouldn’t have any harmful bacteria in there to begin with.
The goal of pasteurization is to kill of harmful pathogens. If you do this early and package and store the milk in the right conditions it can be stable and safe for a long time.
If you don’t pasteurize the milk and leave it for a long time, pathogens in the milk, such as bacteria, can potentially produce toxins. Boiling it at that point might not help, no, as it kills the bacteria, but can leave behind the toxins.
So pasteurization is very effective if done early, but you can’t do whatever you want to the milk and then pasteurize it right before using it and everything is good.
Boiling things isn’t guaranteed to make it safe, because sometimes bacteria produce toxins as a byproduct that are heat-stable, so if you kill the bacterial you can still get food poisoning if you drink it.
Couldn’t one invent a way more effective if more complicated heat-treatment cycle and a corresponding plant for performing it, and then ideally standardization to ensure this is always done this way before milk is sold for consumption?
Some influencer should get onto that!
So pasteurization does nothing?
No, the point is that bacteria can produce toxins in between a company packaging a product and a person receiving it and then boiling it themselves. Companies have to kill the bacteria prior to shipping it. It’s similar to canned foods for example, they put it in the can then heat up the can to kill the bacteria, then ship it, so it shouldn’t have any harmful bacteria in there to begin with.
The goal of pasteurization is to kill of harmful pathogens. If you do this early and package and store the milk in the right conditions it can be stable and safe for a long time.
If you don’t pasteurize the milk and leave it for a long time, pathogens in the milk, such as bacteria, can potentially produce toxins. Boiling it at that point might not help, no, as it kills the bacteria, but can leave behind the toxins.
So pasteurization is very effective if done early, but you can’t do whatever you want to the milk and then pasteurize it right before using it and everything is good.
Most of those bacteria with stable toxins are anaerobic