Dear Fellow BF Friends,
I received this email from Rachel and have reposted it to LACTNET with her
permission.  Please contact her directly if you have any comments or
suggestions.
I suggested that she also culture the milk at 36 hours too just to document
the change between 24 and 36 hours.  Would give a better idea of the
relative safety of the milk at 24 hours.  If there are still few colonies
at 36 hours that is more reassuring for the milk at 24 hours than if there
are many colonies at 36 hours.
Jon Ahrendsen MD

From:   Rachel Brusseau[SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
Sent:   Thursday, December 11, 1997 10:32 PM
To:     [log in to unmask]
Subject:        breast milk research

My name is Rachel Brusseau. I am an undergraduate at Concordia
University. I plan to graduate this spring with a degree in Biology. I
am also a mother, and I exclusively breastfeed my 5 month old daughter
Emily. When I returned to school last September we decided it would be
best if she was bottle-fed breast milk while I was in class. It took us
2 weeks to successfully introduce the bottle. During that time I dumped
SO MUCH breastmilk down the drain, because there was no concrete
information available regarding safe storage time of partially consumed
bottles. I decided to do my senior research project on this topic.

I'm looking for suggestions regarding my proposed methodology. I plan to
have a total of 5 breast feeding women (and their babies) come to my
laboratory. I will have them pump using my sanitized electric pump. I
will culture the milk before they feed it to their baby. The baby will
eat for 5 minutes, and I will culture the milk again. The milk will be
split into two portions, one to be stored at room temperature and one
refrigerated. They will be cultured again at 4, 8, 16, and 24 hours. The
cultures will be tested quantitatively by standard plate count, and
qualitatively with coliform test, also the final plate (24-hour sample)
will be tested for pathogens.

Please let me know your concerns, or any suggestions you may have, as I
want to make sure that my results will be helpful to the industry.

Thank You
Rachel Brusseau
phone: 360 254 4940
email: [log in to unmask]