Microbiological Quality and Safety of Raw Sheep Milks from Native Epirus Breeds: Selective Effects of Thermization on the Microbiota Surviving in Resultant Thermized Milks Intended for Traditional Greek Hard Cheese Production

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors Very interesting article.

Have complementary inoculation tests of Listeria monocytogenes been carried out in raw sheep's milk in order to see its possible resistance to the thermization heat treatment?

 

Author Response

Please refer to the attached PDF file with our responses to Reviewer_1 comments.

Thank you.

John Samelis 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

 

To keep the traditional, home-made foods is important from a cultural, social and scientific point of view. Knowledge and scientific data on such foods can help to maintain and increase the popularity of these products, as well as providing new scientific knowledge.

Although the results give a snapshot of a particular condition, and many factors can influence microbial status, as the author describes in lines 269-274, the season, the place of collection (yard), etc.  So it does not give a complete general picture, and no general conclusions can be drawn, but the discussion section, which is very good, takes a broad look around the topic and compares the microbiological results of samples from Greek with them own results.

Therefore, the manuscript is worth publishing, it provides new scientific results, and it expands our knowledge.

Just a few minor suggestions:

-          The phrase 'starting from' (line 200 and 229) is not scientific enough, I suggest deleting it.

-          Line 107: Suggest clarification of „plant's 'closed'-type pasteurizer” eg. type, parameters.

-          The source, calculation of the data of the „Fig. 1. Distribution (%) of the dominant types of the LAB isolates in five counterpart RM and TM 369 batch samples” is not clear, it is suggested to clarify this, how they received these values.

Author Response

Please refer to the attached PDF file with our responses to Reviewer_2 comments.

Thank you.

John Samelis 

 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf