In order to evaluate the potential control of LFH against micro- organisms naturally occurring in the governing liquid, four different bacterial populations were enumerated in three inde- pendent HM Mozzarella samples.
The different inhibitory activity of LFH observed depended mainly on the bacterial population studied and, secondly, on the sample analyzed (Table 3).
Two-way ANOVA analysis performed separately for each microbial group revealed a significant main effect of time (F(4,30) 1⁄4 129.28e1546.91; p < 0.001) and treatment (F(2,30) 1⁄4 5.06e527.18; p < 0.001). In samples A of Mozzarella cheese the interactions between the main factors were always significant (F(8,30) 1⁄4 8.59e102.88; p < 0.001) for coliforms that were countable from day two of cold storage, showing a decrease of about 2 log from day 4. The effect of treatment on both total mesophilic bacteria and Pseudomonas spp. was not significantly different from those of control cheese samples.