EN
The diversity of processed milk and milk based products requiring cold storage and their growing production scale may pose an increasing risk to consumers of this commodity group from the toxinogenic Bacillus spp., including species ignored so far in routine, potentially pathogenic B. cereus oriented food analysis. The prevalence of potentially toxinogenic Bacillus spp. in milk and milk-based products with a high share of strains psychrotrophic in nature does not guarantee the safety of such products under cold storage at ≥ 6°C at retail. With their infrequent presence in milk and no ability of potentially emetic strains to produce cereulide at < 12°C and also high incidence of strains carrying genes necessary to produce NHE, HBL enterotoxins, it seems obvious that the potentially enterotoxic, psychrotrophic Bacillus spp. may pose a major threat to consumers of milk and milk based products. Contaminating milk mostly as spores, with their 100% survival rate of the stomach passage, regardless of the stomach pH, it may cause food borne diseases at a contamination level of milk and milk-based products much lower than generally acknowledged. The actual higher number of food borne cases caused by Bacillus spp. compared to those recognized in statistics call for the elaboration of more efficient identification methods of pathogenic Bacillus spp. in food and, furthermore, for the verification of existing criteria addressed to these pathogens in products of extended shelf-life under cold storage, such as milk and milk-based products.