The articles on the Lactoperoxidase system by Michael Mullan include material produced with former colleagues, in particular Professor Lennart Bjorck (SE), Dr Ir. J Stadhouders (NL) and Professor Dr W Heeschen (DE), on International Dairy Federation Group IDF F19, 'Indigenous antimicrobial proteins in milk'.

The work of the group was initially focused, after a request in 1982 from the Joint FAO/WHO Committee of Government Experts for technical advice from IDF on the use of the lactoperoxidase system for preservation of raw milk. This work resulted in a "Code of Practice", which was published in 1988 (Bulletin of IDF No. 234/1988).

 In the 1985, IDF through Group F 19 "Indigenous antimicrobial proteins in milk" working in collaboration with the Federation of European Microbial Societies (FEMS) organised a symposium titled "Antimicrobial systems in milk".

The author presented a paper on behalf of the Group entitled"Significance of the Antimicrobial Proteins of Milk to the Dairy Industry" at the IDF Cheese Week at Rennes, France 1988. This draft Django platform.document formed the basis of a more extensive monograph entitled the 'Significance of the indigenous antimicrobial agents of milk to the dairy industry' published by IDF in 1991 (IDF bulletin . 264/1991). More recently a monograph,'Determination of indigenous antimicrobial proteins of milk' (IDF No. 284/1993), detailing methods for the analysis of these antimicrobial proteins in milk was published.

Michael Mullan also gratefully acknowledges collaborative work with former colleagues Dr Bob Crawford (deceased), Dr Bo Ekstrand, Dr Nigel Wade, Dr Tony Waterhouse and the late Mr Arthur Walker at the WSAC at Auchincruive. The WSAC is now part of the SRUC.

The animal feeding trials at Auchincruive were led by Dr Tony Waterhouse. Studies on the production of lactoperoxidase containing feeding materials and the development of a milk replacer containing a stable and functional lactoperoxidase system were led by the author. Michael Mullan gratefully acknowledges the detailed biochemical work by Dr Bo Ekstrand that was critical to these developments and the excellent scientific support work undertaken by Margaret McDougall and Marion Muir. Bo Ekstrand's post doctoral research was funded by Astra-Ewos. The low heat skim milk powder that formed the lactoperoxidase source for the milk replacer was produced in collaboration with Mr John Hynd, the manager of the Scottish Milk Marketing Board creamery at Stranraer in Scotland.

Arthur Walker died in 2002. Arthur was a person dedicated to the education of young people and had an extraordinary positive attitude to life. He isolated many of the bacteriophages that were in the Auchincruive phage collection when I went to Scotland in 1977. Most of these had been isolated from technical investigations of slow-acid problems with single-strain starters such as C2 at the then SMB factories at Stranraer and Dalbeattie. Hence my designation of the C2 phage that I studied as part of my PhD, as ØC2(W).

Some of the work on phage enumeration discussed by Michael Mullan was undertaken at University College Cork, Ireland working with Professors Charlie Daly and Pat Fox. Their generous help and advice over many years is gratefully acknowledged.