Symposium Report

Extended Shelf Life Milk – from Production to Packaging,a One-day Symposium on 14 June 2011 at ReaseheathCollege, Nantwich, Cheshire, England

The Society hosted an extremely successful event in Nantwichon a glorious day in mid June; 63 delegates and eight speakersgathered for the day to hear about developments in the field ofExtended Shelf Life (ESL) milk. The conference was not justconcerned with liquid ESL milk but covered many otheraspects of best practice, quality milk production and processing.Delegates came from all areas of the dairy industry and it wasvery pleasing to see a significant number of students from theEden programme at Reaseheath. The speakers were drawn fromthe UK, Ireland, Norway, Denmark and Germany, giving abroad European perspective to the event with some very highquality papers presented.The event got off to a fantastic start with the keynote presen-

tation given by Dr Seamus O’Mahony from the School of Foodand Nutritional Sciences, University College Cork, who hadworked alongside Prof. Alan Kelly to prepare the paper.Seamus covered many aspects of ESL including some noveland emerging technologies and this paper provided a perfectintroduction to the subject and for the following presentations.It was complemented by the second speaker, Dr Robert Smithof the School of Veterinary Science, Faculty of Health and LifeSciences, University of Liverpool. Rob concentrated on qualitymilk production, emphasising the importance of good animalhusbandry and the treatment and prevention of mastitis. Thepresentation included a great deal of information of whichmany delegates had been previously unaware and was deliv-ered in a clear and unequivocal manner.After a welcome coffee break the event moved on to discuss

two key elements of ESL milk processing. The first given by

SDT stalwart Alan Stack of Tetra Pak, concentrated on thermalprocesses and included reference to membrane technologywhilst the second speaker, Ralph Vennewald of GEAWestfaliain Germany, presented a very interesting paper on centrifugaltechnology.Packaging technology was the subject of the first paper after

lunch and Andre Dybvik, Manager of Fresh & Ultra Clean Sys-tems, Elopak Technology Centre, Norway, gave an excellentaccount of his subject with an emphasis on validation of thetechnologies and packaging materials. This paper was followedby a presentation by Dr Ken Burgess, SDT Senior Vice Presi-dent & Independent Consultant, who provided some insightsinto some mechanisms and techniques that could be used toimprove shelf life. Many of these were taken from his experi-ence gained during his many years in senior technical roleswithin the Dairy Industry.The final two papers covered two diverse areas that were

entitled ‘support services’ and Eigil Appel Pedersen, MD ofBactoforce in Denmark, covered plant inspections very enthu-siastically. He provided detailed examples of crack testingapplications and several other thought provoking images weredisplayed that demonstrated the benefits of using technology toinspect internal surfaces. The day concluded with an overviewof some leading edge laboratory equipment and test methodsgiven by Richard Batty, Industry Sales Manager for Foss inIreland.It is hoped that a number of the presentations given on the

day will be converted into papers for publication in thisJournal.

Maurice WaltonExecutive Director

doi: 10.1111/j.1471-0307.2011.00702.x

460 Vol 64, No 3 August 2011 International Journal of Dairy Technology