Heat processing for food safety

Making safe food and drink is what it's all about – and heat processing is one of the longest established ways of doing this.

With a hundred years of experience we can help you ensure that your process delivers the heat needed to control problem organisms, whether it is traditional canned fruit or vegetables, or aseptically processed fruit juices in cartons and pasteurised ready meals. We also have expertise in determining the susceptibility of different organisms to heat.

Validation

Heat process validation is of key importance in improving food quality without compromising safety – we have expertise in time–temperature integrators and spore and enzyme reduction techniques, and our own software – CTemp Version 9 – allows us to model the rate of heat transfer into containers (see separate item).

Many factors affect the amount of heat delivered: with canned foods this includes the shape and volume of the can, the product it contains, and the degree of mixing during the process. With aseptically processed foods, the viscosity of the food and its rate of transfer through the heating pipes are major determinants.The same factors apply whether the food is fully sterilised or receives a pasteurisation process. We have a range of techniques that can predict and measure both the characteristics of the products and process, and the actual amount of heat delivered.

Heat resistance

As well as determining how much heat has been applied to a food in a process, it is obviously vital to know the susceptibility of the microorganisms in the product to that heat.This is not straightforward, as organisms vary considerably in their heat resistance, not just between species, but also between strains; the environment (e.g. water activity and water content, fat content, acidity) that the organisms are in or have been previously subject to also has a major effect, so it is important to get expert advice.

Contact:

Processing: Nick May +44(0)1386 842031
nick.may@campdenbri.co.uk

Microbiology: Joy Gaze +44(0)1386 842064
joy.gaze@campdenbri.co.uk