What is the temperature to which milk must be heated to be pasteurized?
Most milk sold for direct human consumption is pasteurized. Pasteurization is the process of heating milk to a high enough temperature, and for a long enough time, to destroy all disease-causing organisms (especially the heat-resistant bacteria Mycobacterium tuberculosis). Pasteurization, which was invented by the French chemist Louis Pasteur (1822-1895), also slows the rate at which milk spoils. It does this in two ways: first, it kills most of the bacteria that affect the milk’s freshness; and second, it destroys the enzymes within the milk that break down the milk and give it that spoiled taste. There are various methods of pasteurization, each of which employs different combinations of temperature and duration of time. One standard pasteurization method, called the “batch process,” involves heating the milk to 144°…
