**8. A novel approach for raw milk storage: N2 gas flushing technology**

Two major observations were at the basis of the search and testing of a novel approach to better preserve the quality and safety of raw milk. In low-income countries, considerable amounts of milk are adulterated by the use of various chemicals including antibiotics to inhibit bacterial growth. On the other hand, in high-income countries, it is well known that psychrotrophs mainly considered as benign in their majority are causing significant spoilage of raw milk; our group also observed that these bacteria are heavily loaded with AR determinants.

N2 gas, a non-finite resource and considered as chemically inert, was therefore tested at laboratory and pilot plant scales [57–59]. The so far established benefits, recorded from raw and pasteurised milk samples and from the treatment of some pure bacterial strains, are summarised in **Figure 2**.

For low- or high-income countries, the N2 gas flushing technology presents indisputably multiple advantages considering bacteriological, biochemical, technological and nutritional aspects for the preservation of the quality and safety of raw milk.

The N2 gas flushing technology has been recently granted a patent by the European Patent Office [63]. Future studies should consider the optimisation of the treatments and the completion of the further steps to render N2 gas flushing technology as fully sustainable at large scale.

### **Figure 2.**

*Impact of N2 flushing on raw and pasteurised milk-associated bacterial populations, and on some pure strains [24, 38, 42, 57–62].* 

*Quality and Safety of Bovine Raw Milk: Present Challenges and Technological Solutions DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.83507* 
