Milk is a highly perishable food so to enable it to be stored and distributed for consumption without spoilage, and without being a health risk through growth of pathogenic bacteria, it is heat treated. The most common type of heat treatment in many parts of the world is pasteurisation, which is performed at a minimum of 72°C for 15 seconds. This is the least heat treatment needed to destroy most pathogenic microorganisms and it also destroys most spoilage organisms. However, a small number of bacteria remain after pasteurisation and packaging, and can grow during storage. Such growth is slow at low temperature and consequently pasteurised milk is always kept refrigerated. Even under refrigeration, pasteurised milk only keeps for about two weeks. There are two ways in which this can be carried out: in-container sterilisation and ultrahigh- temperature (UHT) processing. Both produce a ‘commercially sterile’ product which means the milk does not contain microorganisms which can grow un