UGA licenses invention that kills
food-borne pathogens in minutes
Source of
Article: http://www.physorg.com/news158234730.html April 6th,
2009 A
new technology that kills dangerous pathogens on food at home and in
restaurants, grocery stores, beverage-manufacturing and food-processing
facilities has been licensed to the maker of FIT Fruit and Vegetable Wash™.
The licensing agreement between the University of Georgia Research
Foundation, Inc. and HealthPro Brands, Inc., FIT's parent company, vastly
extends the range of applications for the company's current anti-microbial
food wash.
The exclusive
license, which includes sublicensing rights, is effective in select countries
around the world, including the U.S. The new
technology, invented by scientists from the University of Georgia Center for
Food Safety, can kill significant numbers of dangerous E. coli and salmonella
in less than one minute, but it is recommended that the wash be applied from
one to five minutes. The technology can be used as a food wash, with
commercial applications for the produce, poultry, meat and egg processing
industries. "The
re-formulated FIT food wash will kill more harmful microbes faster,"
said Mike Doyle, Center for Food Safety director, and—together with
microbiologist Tong Zhao—one of the technology's inventors. "The new
anti-microbial food wash is orders of magnitude more powerful and twice
faster." Doyle is an
internationally recognized authority on food safety whose research focuses on
developing methods to detect and control food-borne bacterial pathogens at
all levels of the food continuum, from farm to table. He has served as a
scientific adviser to many groups, including the World Health Organization,
the Food
and Drug Administration, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the
U.S. Department of Defense, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. "The new
technology takes our current FIT product to a whole new level of
sanitization," said Todd Wichmann, president and CEO of HealthPro
Brands. "We look forward to getting our improved product into the hands
of industry." Importantly,
Doyle said, the wash has no effects on smell, taste or appearance of the
foods that are treated, even delicate produce. "The new product doesn't
interfere with the shelf-life of sensitive foods," he said. Like the
original FIT Fruit
and Vegetable
Wash now used at home by consumers and by food service industry, the new
antimicrobial wash uses a combination of two inexpensive components that are
safe for humans and the environment. The new FIT product also will be
available as a spray and immersion solution for foods ranging from fragile
leafy produce, fruits and vegetables, to more robust foods such as meats and
poultry, or food preparation equipment and food transportation vehicles. For
the greatest efficacy, the product is used at different concentrations and
different periods of exposure for different applications. FIT will
replace chlorine as the new standard for reducing harmful bacteria levels in
industrial settings, said Wichmann. Chlorine's drawbacks are multiple: it is
toxic at high concentrations, it may produce off-flavors and undesirable
appearance in certain food products; it can damage equipment; it can only be
used, stored and transported in conjunction with specialized equipment and
trained personnel; and because it may be harmful to the environment, it also
is subject to environmental regulations. Chlorine may also damage certain seeds
and delicate sprouts. "We
can't rely on chlorine any longer," Doyle said. "In addition to
being safer and more acceptable in terms of appearance and smell, our studies
have shown this new technology to be considerably more effective than
chlorine." The product outperforms other food sanitization technologies,
such as ozone, as well. Ozone, a short-lived gas, must be produced using
specialized equipment immediately upon use, thus making its use inaccessible
to the majority of companies in the food industry. Gennaro Gama,
a senior technology manager with UGARF, said that the new product also could
be used as an anti-microbial additive in food products such as ground meats,
butters and pastes. "We are
very pleased to have established a partnership with HealthPro," Gama
said. "We believe that our respective technologies interact
synergistically and will lead to the short-term development of very versatile
products that can be used in virtually all segments of the food industry and
with considerable potential to mitigate public health issues associated with
food poisoning." Gama
continued, "We are also grateful to HealthPro for agreeing with UGARF's
request to retain the ability to license the technology for humanitarian
purposes in Sub-Saharan Africa, where contamination of the food chain is
ubiquitous and easy counter-measures are frequently unavailable to those
populations." Source:
University of Georgia (news
: web) |
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