ABSTRACT
4 5Nowadays, prime goal of milk processors is extending the shelf life of milk and milk products without compromising their quality and safety. In general, use of heat is still a common practice in dairy industries to guarantee the microbiological safety of milk and its subproducts. However, the processing of milk through heating had a noticeable evolution during the twentieth century, which has continued until the present time. Technological improvements together with the efforts and diligence of processors, technologists, and dairy researchers in bringing superior quality products to consumers, have been triggering the investigation and development of thermal and nonthermal approaches for milk processing capable of substituting the traditional well-established preservation processes. Novel thermal processing technologies are dealing with the change in temperature as opposed to the novel nonthermal processing technologies such as pulsed electric fields, high pressure, pulsed light, ultrasound, and gamma radiation among others, where temperature may also change but is not the major parameter responsible for food processing.
