The rising demand for plant-based dairy alternatives presents critical food safety challenges. Plant-based ingredients, due to their close contact with soil, are especially vulnerable to contamination by spore-forming bacteria—particularly Bacillus cereus, a known toxin producer. Leveraging Agroscope’s expertise in dairy research, starter cultures, and fermentation technologies, this project aims to develop safe, sustainable processes for producing cheese alternatives from shelled sunflower seed press cake. We apply a combination of heat treatment and lactic acid fermentation to control spore germination and bacterial growth during critical stages of processing, ensuring product quality and safety, while taking sustainability into consideration. This work contributes to the development of safe, sustainable food production processes, offering an innovative, energy-efficient approach to microbial risk mitigation. By leveraging by-products such as sunflower press cake, this research also supports circular food systems and the transition toward more sustainable and resilient food production. Based on these findings we recommend, additional monitoring of the B. cereus concentration in dairy alternatives after heat treatment and immediately after the end of fermentation.
