jhc said:
I dont know that I'd do it. You'd immediately make it a mostly anaerobic environment before the fermentation has a chance to drop the ph into a range where botulism can't grow.
Thats a good point, and while the pH issue can be addressed otherwise, I'm certain there are more pieces to the whole puzzle that at least I'm ignorant too.
I did mention this whole idea to our biochemist at work, and she launched into a an explanation of the metabolization processes that take place aerobically, and anaerobically, basically, in the presence of oxygen, and without. I'll have to confirm which is was, but one of the two, I'm guessing the anaerobic, requires ~10x as much activity. I'll confirm that since I feel it matters.
Any of these organisms, and us humans too, produce/break down adenosine triphosphate (ATP) for fuel. The "good" organisms that do the fermentation, I suspect, might be facultative anaerobes, that can make ATP(cellular fuel) in the presence of oxygen, and can switch to fermentation or anaerobic respiration in the absence of oxygen. (This is probably very important)
The "nasties", or at least some of them to include the dreaded botulism, is an obligate anaerobe, which will die in the presence of oxygen(aerobic), but thrive in an environment without oxygen(anaerobic). *This is nothing more than hypothesizing so don't assume ANYTHING from these statements that are most certainly oversimplistic, and probably wrong.
Based on the above total butchery of the biochem field, we may hypothesize that the good "bugs" are facultative anaerobes that are able to grow in either environment(aerobic or anaerobic), which allows them to over run and conquer the bad "bugs" that are unable to function in both environments. <---This is a total wild ass scientific guess and probably wrong.
If the above is true, it might not be beneficial to purge and create an anaerobic environment too quickly as it COULD allow bad bugs to grow at the same rate as the good.
it's way past my bed time, so I'm sure there will be some other input tomorrow.