A Trial to Control Bacillus cereus on Soft Cheese Using Electrolyzed Water

Bacillus cereus is a frequent pathogenic contaminant of the Egyptian white soft cheese as the bacteria and its spores can withstand the industrial conditions of such products. With a growing search for sustainable, cheap and eco-friendly disinfection and sanitation technologies in food industry sector, Electrolyzed water with all its types are innovative and promising solutions that improve safety, quality, and operational efficiency of this field. In this research trial we studied the possibility of the electrolyzed water, either alkaline (AEW) or neutral (NEW) or combined, to control Bacillus cereus and act as a safe preservative to white soft cheese (which is a type of our traditional white cheese made from raw milk without any preservatives or even enough heat treatment as boiling or pasteurization of the used milk ) . The experiment revealed a promising effect of both types (AEW & NEW) firstly on decreasing the number of Bacillus cereus bacteria in white soft cheese. Treatment with alkaline electrolyzed water for only 5 min reduced the count by 51.97%, while in using combined treatment of NEW followed by AEW, each for 5 min, the reduction percentage was 42.58%, meanwhile the highest reduction was observed in cheese treated with NEW alone for 5 min. with reduction 86.16% in its count. Not just that but both AEW and NEW showed considerable second effect on downregulation of the pathogenic gene expression of (dnaJ, hbL, cytK, Ent-FM, nhe-hbLD). So, we can conclude that neutral electrolyzed water has better effect on both reducing the Bacillus ceruse count and decline the pathogenic activity of its pathogenic genes.