Assessment of ‘freshness’ in bovine mozzarella cheese

The Italian dairy industry is greatly engaged in meeting the demand of high-moisture bovine mozzarella cheese consumers, who have high expectation regarding its freshness. Unfortunately, such a feature cannot be verified since the labelling regulation only considers the indication of the expiry date, and not the day of manufacturing. The present investigation aimed at assessing the freshness of HMMC by monitoring the proteolytic changes during storage at different temperature conditions for different times using an already tested index of freshness and the quantification of αS1-I-CN fragment. The study was performed on PDO samples of known origin and was then applied to evaluate the status of 58 samples of unknown origin purchased from the market. Results showed that the index of freshness and αS1-I-CN quantification could be used to double-check the ‘freshness’ of the products, allowing the guarantee to the consumer of the quality stated on the label.