Nowadays, the most used process for disinfection of liquid foods is pasteurization but due to the use of heat, the food can undergo undesired changes. In this work, was investigated ultraviolet radiation (UV-C) as a non-thermal process comparing with the classical pasteurization for disinfection of soybean water extract (SWE) previously inoculated with the most common microorganisms in grains, Staphylococcus aureus and Escherichia coli, and the most worrying in "ready to eat" products, Salmonella enteritidis. The UV-C radiation treatment was performed on dynamic conditions within a chamber equipped with a low-pressure mercury lamp, the radiation dose used was 8.28 J.cm-2. The pasteurized samples were heated to 75 °C for 15 seconds and rapidly cooled to 4 °C. A triplicate decimal dilution of all control and treated samples was performed and the plating and counting of the colony forming units per milliliter (CFU / mL) were performed. In the pasteurized samples, the decrease of the microbial load was 2.79, 2.64 and 3.59 log for Salmonella, Staphylococcus and Escherichia, respectively. While for samples exposed to UV-C radiation, a decrease of 3.00, 3.61 and 6.78 was obtained for Salmonella, Staphylococcus and Escherichia, respectively. The inactivation of the microorganisms in the samples treated by UV-C was more effective than in the pasteurized samples, especially in the samples contaminated with Staphylococcus aureus and Escherichia coli. In this way, it was possible to confirm the efficiency of the disinfection method by UV-C radiation in foods without the use of high temperatures, avoiding possible changes in the final product.