Soft and semi-soft farm cheeses made from pasteurized milk and having high moisture content are common craft products in Ireland. Theses cheeses have limited shelf-life and needs to consider the release of CO(2) and consumption of O(2) for packaging design. The objective of this work was to analyze the effect of the storage temperature (4, 12 and 20 degrees C) and different gas compositions (O(2) and CO(2)) on the gas exchange rate of whole soft cheese (camembert-type). The O(2) consumption rate was found to be 26.21 ml kg(-1) h(-1) at 4 degrees C when stored in 19% O(2) and 10% CO(2) gas composition. it increased to 91.03 ml kg(-1) h(-1) when temperature increased to 20 degrees C at the same gas composition. A Pareto analysis showed that the temperature and O(2) concentration have a significant effect on the gas exchange rate, whereas the effect of CO(2) concentration was negligible. The effect of O(2) concentration on the gas exchange rate was found to be well described by a Michaelis-Menten equation whereas an Arrhenius equation was used to fit the effect of temperature. Combining the effect of O(2) and temperature, a global model was developed and validated which provided a good fit to the experimental data, explaining 94% of the variance of the data. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.