Technology helps preserve milk for months

Ultra-heat-treated technology helps create unmanageable milk for months, but also makes it impossible to make cheeses.

Milk is a very short time of use. Even when pasteurized, milk usually goes away after about 10-15 days in the refrigerator, but there is a process that has been in place for the past 50 years, allowing the milk to be stored for months at a time, according to the BBC.

This process is called ultra-high temperature treatment (UHT) , which produces pasteurized milk . In the past, milk was usually treated by pasteurization, to kill the TB bacteria and some pathogens. The manufacturer heated the milk to 72 degrees Celsius for about 15 seconds, then cooled. This process does not kill all bacteria, many of the bacteria left over will not harm if the milk is kept refrigerated and consumed quickly. Most milk in the United States, Australia and New Zealand are all pasteurized.

UHT milk is more popular in Europe than America. (Photo: BBC)

In many European countries, UHT pasteurized milk is the most common. This milk is heated to 140 degrees Celsius for three seconds. High temperatures immediately kill all bacteria and most spores. The absence of bacteria makes the milk to be very long, as long as it is isolated from the air.

However, UHT pasteurization does not help the milk to last forever, preserving UHT milk also requires caution. Milk needs to be maintained at 20-30 degrees Celsius. If transported through a hot, humid, or sun-exposed area for long periods of time, the remaining spores in the milk may resume functioning. As a result, many solids form inside the package, which, when opened, looks like yogurt or egg whites.

One downside of UHT milk is that it can not make cheese . Cheese is a two-step process, in which the protein is cut off by the rennet enzyme, which then bundles into cheese lumps. This process is blocked by some proteins in UHT milk, making the cheese impossible to clot. This does not happen with regular pasteurized milk.

The process of milk packaging after extreme heat treatment.