Microbiology

The Kraft Walker Cheese Company in the late 1920s was probably the first cheese company to begin regular microbiological work, quickly extending it to other food products and building up a food microbiology laboratory which continues to be the largest in Australia. Following Whitehead's seminal work in New Zealand in 1935, D. I. Shew at the Kraft Allansford laboratory pioneered Australian studies on bacteriophage in cheese factories. He developed methods for in-factory protection of cheese starters from the technological nightmare of phage attack which in an hour or two could ruin a day's production in a cheese factory and do it day after day if nothing were done about it. Shew's work led in 1940 to the first isolated starter room in Australia and phage free cultures and in 1946 he introduced New Zealand methods, including starter rotation, for overcoming phage infection in the factory. Shew published briefly on the subject and, with A. J. Hodge of CSIRO, achieved the first Australian electron microscope study of the stages of starter lysis by phage particles.[168] CSIRO work on phage began in 1950 in the then Section of Dairy Research and has made major contributions to the industry.[169] Cheese starter selection and protection from phage has become highly sophisticated but is, and will remain, an on-going study. Basic work in the University of New South Wales has been applied, and CSIRO Dairy Research Laboratories continue to supply starters and advice to cheese factories. Mauri Foods has adopted overseas technology to the preparation and supply of frozen starters in vat size units for the industry and the Gilbert Chandler Institute of Dairy Research has followed a line of research different from that of CSIRO.

Beer and wine also are produced by fermentation but while de Bavay introduced pure cultures of yeast for beer in the 1880s, pure cultures for wine fermentation were not available until after the Australian Wine Research Institute began work in 1955, and control and induction of the malo-lactic fermentation, i.e., the bacterial decarboxylation of 1-malic acid to lactic acid and carbon dioxide, is even more recent.[170]

The need for cleanliness and cooling, if spoilage were to be minimized, was recognized in the latter part of the last century in both the dairy and brewing industries and the value of clear filtered water was known to soft drink makers. The use of positive microbiological control of raw materials, finished products, and water supplies for cleaning is much more recent. Thus, at a time when the quality of the milk supply in both Sydney and Melbourne was causing concern, the Victorian Milk Supply Act of 1922 provided for a milk laboratory at the Veterinary Research Institute in the University of Melbourne for the microbiological and chemical testing of milk from the farms.

Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering