A 10-week project funded by CRA Corn Refiners Association:

The hypothesis tested in this project is that pilot-scale adaptations of industrially relevant unit operations of steeping, peroxide treatment, and drying, reduce counts of the indicator organism Enterococcus faecium in inoculated challenge studies. The specific objectives to test this hypothesis are:

Conduct an E. faecium inoculated challenge study for production of dry powders at pilot-scale using a corn wet milling unit operations varying steeping, peroxide, and drying parameters.
Count the surviving population of E. faecium at each unit operation