Gamma ray irradiated goat milk: comparative sensorial analysis with pasteurized goat milk

Goat milk consumption has increased in the last years, due to its better digestibility and for constituting a good alternative to cow milk for intolerant people. Brazil has over 10 millions goats, mainly in the Northeast area. Considering that it is very important to increase the shelf-life for this product, this work was done to test the gamma-radiation as a preservation method, evaluating acceptability by sensorial analysis compared with pasteurized milk. The goat milk was bought in the Animal Production Department/ESALQ/USP, Piracicaba, and irradiated with 3,5 kGy in the Food Irradiation Laboratory/CENA/USP, using a cobalt-60 irradiator, type Gammabeam-650, from Nordion, Canada. After irradiation, the samples were maintained under refrigeration at 5 deg C and submitted to sensorial analysis at 1st, 7th and 15th days by 30 untrained tasters. The results indicated, by Tukey test, a significant preference for the pasteurized milk in comparison to the irradiated one, because a hard caprine flavor was developed by the irradiation. (author)