To protect consumer health and wellbeing and reduce food waste, it's critical to manage microbial access and growth in foods from "farm to fork." While it may seem nearly impossible to produce raw materials in a good and consistently hygienic manner, there are numerous strategies to restrict essential bacteria' access to and rates of growth. In order to reduce the number of pathogenic species that can spread to raw materials used in the manufacture of food, Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP), or the sanitary management of the raw materials, should begin on the farm. To prevent post-process contamination and control "persistent infections" that can be transferred to food "in-process," a production facility's entire environment must adhere to the HACCP principles. Foods that have undergone heat processing are intended to have specific numbers of foodborne pathogens reduced or food rotting organisms eliminated, maintaining microbiological safety and extending shelf life. D- and z-values are used to quantify how resistant an organism is to heat. The D-value measures how long it takes to heat something to a certain temperature in order to kill 90% of the organism's living cells or spores. The relative heat resistance of an organism is indicated by the z-value, which measures the temperature change required to change the D-value by one log cycle. The amount of time needed to reach the requisite deadly effect at a given temperature will decrease as heating temperatures rise.