Final answer:
Pasteurization is a microbial control process that uses heat to kill pathogens and reduce the number of microbes that cause spoilage in food, while maintaining food quality. It does not sterilize the food, so pasteurized products can still spoil over time.
Step-by-step explanation:
The term that describes the process that destroys microorganisms or affects their growth on an object or a surface is pasteurization. While sterilization aims for the complete removal or killing of all forms of microbial life, including endospores and viruses, on an object, pasteurization uses lower levels of heat to kill pathogens and reduce the number of spoilage-causing microbes.
This process was first developed by Louis Pasteur in the 1860s to prevent the spoilage of beer and wine. In today's context, pasteurization is most commonly associated with milk and other food products, where it successfully kills heat-sensitive pathogens while preserving the food's quality, which is why it is a preferred method over boiling or autoclaving for many food items.
Methods that lead to the death of microbes often have the suffixes -cide or -cidal, such as bactericides and fungicides. Those that only inhibit growth but do not kill the organism typically have suffixes -stat or -static, like bacteriostatic or fungistatic. It is important to note that pasteurized foods are not sterile and can still eventually spoil due to not being completely free of all microbial life.