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Power-wash
Source
of Article: http://www.meatnews.com/news/beyond_stories.asp?ArticleID=102084
Fieldale Farms installs an electrolyzed water system for pathogen
control
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(MEATPOULTRY.com, May 01, 2009)
by Steve Bjerklie
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Unfortunately, admits
Joe Stapley, drinking the stuff will not give you the super-strength to
leap tall buildings in a single bound or fly faster than a speeding bullet.
But Empowered Water -- electrolyzed water is the formal name -- a new kind
of food-safety chemical produced by EAU Technologies, can reduce pathogens
on chicken carcasses without compromising quality. Fieldale Farms is now
using the USDA-approved solution throughout primary processing in one of
the company’s poultry processing plants. It’s the first installation for
EAU in the meat and poultry industry.
Stapley, EAU’s senior
vice president for business development and investor relations, told
MEATPOULTRY.com that the product is made by "taking a clean water
source, adding some culinary-grade salt, then subjecting it to an
electrolysis generator," which separates the positive and negative
ions in the water and separates the salt to create two kinds of water, one
acidic and one alkaline. The alkaline water acts as a cleaning agent and
the acidic water is a disinfectant. Fieldale uses Empowered Water, Stapley
said, "as their primary antimicrobial under their HACCP plan." In
the laboratory under controlled circumstances, Empowered Water results in a
six-to-seven-log reduction in pathogen cell numbers, though Stapley says
that "in the real world of processing plants the log reductions will
be lower."
He said Empowered
Water could replace "essentially all the caustic cleaning chemicals in
a processing plant," though he added that it cannot be sprayed on
galvanized metal due to corrosion problems. But another benefit is that as
soon as Empowered Water comes into contact with organic material, such as a
poultry carcass, it reverts back to simple H2O. "That means you have
no downstream pollutants. Your plant’s discharge is basically water."
The effects of
electrolyzed water were first recognized in the mid-19th century by British
physicist and chemist Michael Faraday. In Asia, Stapley said, such water is
used routinely by dentists to disinfect human mouths and in other
small-volume applications. The problem for larger food uses, he added, has
been harnessing the electrolyzed water’s benefits in commercial levels. The
EAU system is the first to successfully overcome this obstacle, according
to Stapley. The system is installed between a plant’s water source and the
spray applicators or nozzles. "The solutions are all created on-site,"
he said.
He noted that even
though EAU’s Empowered Water has USDA approval as an antimicrobial, selling
the product to skeptical processors who have heard dozens of pitches of
miracle products over the years was difficult. "Frankly, there are a
lot of claims about electrolyzed water out there, and some of them give you
that ‘it’s too good to be true’ feeling. And from a processor’s point of
view, they’re asking why they should invest – I mean, they don’t get
rewarded for an extra-clean chicken," he commented. "But we think
we’ve finally turned the corner on breaking the noise barrier. It took a
progressive processor to see the potential, and that’s exactly what
Fieldale is. They’ve been great to work with."
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