The company said for the first time it had "achieved the milestone" of producing over one billion plastic cartons of fresh milk.

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Listeria monocytogenes, for example, is a microbe that actually grows happily at refrigerator temperatures and is thus delighted with the new popularity of mass-produced foods that sit on refrigerator shelves in tidy plastic cartons.

ECONOMIST: Food poisoning

Monti killed that deal on a theory called conglomeratization: By buying a maker of machinery that produces rival plastic bottles, Tetra Laval could in a few years leverage its lead position in cartons to also control plastic alternatives (glass bottles and tin cans are the packaging products still out of Tetra Laval's reach).

FORBES: Two-card Monti