Guidance on cheese storage and shipping temperatures
HI Everyone,
Im looking for some guidance on cheese storage and shipping temperatures.
We are currently shipping aged cheeses (cheddar, blue) and some soft cheeses (such as cottage, ricotta, cream cheese). As i'm researching i'm finding various regulations stating some cheeses are exempt from refrigeration during storage and shipping.
For the soft cheeses, these must be refrigerated for food safety, but the hard aged cheeses are refrigerated for quality.
Can anyone provide any reference material for this?
Thanks
Weebus
Not really my strong point, but there is this that I found: https://www.cdr.wisc..._temps_full.pdf
Completed by: Jay Russell Bishop & Marianne Smukuwski from the Wisconsin Centre for Dairty Reasearce, University of Wisconsin
Personally, I would look at the storage of the cheese in the retailers and distribute at that.
Nice article. Like the heat treatment call out of 145 d F and 16 s for the kill step. Would be interested in anyone having information on cheese sauces. have an active project with Macaroni and Cheese.
Whoa zombie thread!
For cheese transport, yes absolutely I would transport chilled, especially the high moisture activity cheeses as they could have pathogenic growth but aged cheeses will be matured at a higher temperature. For quality reasons though again I'd still bring the temperature down.
Blue cheese is a funny one. The mould actively grows and does so relatively quickly so it can be very important to chill them down to limit the growth. The other thing is that growth causes heat generation which then causes more growth... you can actually get to a point the cheese melts if the airflow and temperature control is poor!
As for cheese sauces, that's different. Part of what makes cheese safe is the starter cultures out competing competitive microflora. Once you cook the cheese, the starter cultures are dead so as soon as you have a cheese sauce like macaroni and cheese, that's a high risk food in which pathogens will readily grow.