I opened a page in Food Science, Fifth Edition (Potter/Hotchkiss), at random. Here's what it said:
THERMAL DEATH CURVES Bacteria are killed by heat at a rate that is very nearly proportional to the number present in the system being heated. This is referred to as a logarithmic order of death (emphasis mine), which means that under constant thermal conditions the same percentage of the bacterial population will be destroyed in a given time interval.
I then wondered what else on the web discusses the thermal death curve and the logarithmic order of death. Here's what I found:
A chapter from a process engineering book
A most excellent guide on pH from UC Davis, along with a glossary of fish processing-related terms
A discussion of pasteurization and diary from University of Guelph in Canada
Most of the hits on google were on academic or public health websites. What a shocker.
