OCCURRENCE OF MOLDS IN FRESH CHEESES

The purpose of our work was isolation, enumeration and identification of molds in fresh cheeses. A total of 112 cheese samples were obtained from different retail markets in Santa Cruz de Tenerife. Of the sampl es, 57.2% were positive for industrially craft produced cheeses. The v alues for the industrially produced cheeses ranged between 10(2) and 1 0(6) CFU/g, for the craft produced cheeses the corresponding values we re 10(2)-10(7) CFU/G; and 4.4x103. The genera identified most often in both types of cheeses were Geotrichum and Penicillium with 49.4 and 2 9.1% of isolates, respectively. Species of the Aspergillus genus, the main producer of aflatoxins, was detected in 1.3% of the total samples analyzed. Nonetheless, the presence of such genera as Fusarium, Cepha losporium, Cladosporium, etc. is considered to be undesirable, as they are capable of producing other mycotoxins related to specific patholo gical processes.