Science holds the key to food preservation
Advanced technologies look set to help the industry find better ways of preserving certain high quality foods, a leading scientist in the field has claimed.
Craig Leadley, a principle research officer at Campden BRI, told the Food Processing Knowledge Transfer Network conference in York that various new thermal and non-thermal technologies under investigation had the potential to provide improvements in product quality while extending shelf-life.
He described work on ultra-high pressure pasteurisation and predicted that the 115 full-scale units worldwide would increase to 250 by 2010.
Another technique, - pressure assisted thermal sterilisation, which used a combination of heat and pressure - was suitable in situations where bacterial spores were present, said Leadley, since these are resistant to treatment by high pressure alone.
Other techniques discussed include the use of ohmic or resistive heating. This uses an AC current passed through a conductive media in equipment supplied by companies such as APV to raise the temperature and sterilise products such as fruit very quickly.
Alternatively, for pumpable premium quality products, a process known as pulsed electric field (PEF) processing could be used, said Leadley. PEF made use of multiple pulses of high voltage, at a level of 20-80kV/cm, to kill off pathogenic cells. At least two commercial (PEF) systems were already in operation, he added.
Another technology, high-intensity pulsed light, was likely to find increasing application, particularly for new product development, since it allowed less water and chemicals to be used and thereby clean-label declarations on products, said Leadley.
“On smooth surfaces this technology works incredibly well,” he said. And while applications were likely to be “niche”, he added: “Some are close to commercialisation.”
