Convenors: Dr. Judith A. Narvhus & Prof Terje Sørhaug, Dept. Food Science, Agricultural University of Norway
Chair: Dr. Judith A. Narvhus

Fermented foods play a very important role in the diet of millions of people around the world. Many of these fermentations are still "indigenous" or "spontaneous" and the skills to perform them are only based on traditions. There is a lot to learn from a scientific point of view and the knowledge has a great potential for the development and improvement of fermentation processes in general. The workshop will highlight some aspects of indigenous fermented foods.

Workshop programme:

The workshop will consist of an introduction and four presentations, each 20 minutes in length, followed by a discussion:

Introduction:
Historical and cultural aspects of traditional fermented milks - Dr. Judith A. Narvhus
Fermented milk products have probably been consumed since about two days after man began to milk animals, which is at least 10 000 years ago. In all countries where milk is consumed, fermented milks are part of the assortment of dairy products offered to the consumer. The commercialisation of dairy starter cultures has resulted in a certain standardisation of dairy products across the world. However, on a global basis, most fermented milk is produced with the help of spontaneous fermentation and the microorganisms involved have in many cases not been characterised, or their participatory role in product quality elucidated. Traditional fermented milk products may also utilise particular technologies that impart product-specific characteristics. Examples of this are backslopping, which is often used to promote the desired fermentation, and the smoking of the container prior to fermentation, which is done in several African countries. Some fermentations may be initiated by addition of plant material, as in the Norwegian "Tettemelk", others are partially continuous, for example, kefir and koumiss. In some countries, the fermented milk is used as the basis for other dairy products. It may be churned into butter and then heat clarified to ghee, as in Uganda; it may be distilled into alcohol as in Mongolia. Indigenous fermented milks from raw milk are made under unhygienic conditions and the bacterial and fungal flora may be diverse, dangerous and destructive. If the indigenous product characteristics are to be retained, the scaling up of indigenous fermented milk products may therefore not simply be a matter of finding the right culture of lactic acid bacteria.

Presentations

1. Metabolic peculiarities of lactic acid bacteria enabling their growth in cheese - Dr. Toomas Paalme /Kaarel Adamberg. Tallin Technical University, Dept. of Food Processing, Tallin, Estonia.

2. Growth kinetics of unselected proteolytic Lactobacillus strains in Scamorza Altamurana cheese - Dr. Federico Baruzzi, Istituto si Scienze delle Produzioni Alimentari, CNR, Italy

3. Reactivation of bacteria subjected to stresses by an extracellular protein of Luteococcus japonicus subsp. casei - Prof. Lena Vorobjeva, Dept. of Microbiology, Biology Facility, Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia

4. Intervention study in Northern Ghana ; Koko sour water as a natural probiotic treatment for shortening diarrhoea in young children - Vicki Lei, The Royal Veterinary and Agricultural University, Dept. of Dairy and Food Science. Copenhagen, Denmark.