Dr Cameon Ivarsson reports on the challenge facing countries to improving their own standards if they hope to export and commercialise their products in Europe.
The complexity of supervising the food supply of 25 nations in the European Union is dealt with by a powerful and efficient structure that the European health authorities have put in place to efficiently insure the safe food supply to its 450 million consumers.
EU regulators are becoming increasingly stringent, and the rigorous implementation of the safety standards through extensive testing insures compliance. Their rapid alert system warns member countries of consignments that do not reach standards and that are rejected at European ports of entry. Repeated alerts on certain products are followed closely and if necessary commission delegations have been mandated on missions, studies and audits in an effort to resolve food safety issues with producing countries.
Aflatoxin levels have come to the forefront of food safety regulators with scientific studies indicating that low levels of aflatoxins can be carcinogenic. In the case of aflatoxin, EU regulators have set tolerance levels 10 times lower (2ppm) than countries such as the USA (20ppm). This poses a major challenge to exporting countries unprepared to take on the measures necessary to comply with these new standards.
Because of the fragmented nature of the agrarian estates, with individual landowners producing according to traditional methods, it is difficult and expensive for these independent businesses to access and implement practices common to larger more industrialised exploitations of the western world.
A typical example can be found in the culture of pistachios in Iran. Tens of thousands of individual growers, whose orchards have been passed on through generations, cultivate their trees in a traditional fashion. By comparison the second largest producer of pistachios in the world, the USA, cultivates extensive orchards, using mechanised harvesting and processing, oven dryers and bleaching. As a result they have been able to take the lion's share of the market with a safer but inferior quality nut. The variety of trees in Iran produce a variety of nuts, the pruning, fertilising, treatment, harvest and drying are not mechanised and are more natural, but more importantly there is no standardisation of product and process.
To sanitise the orchards requires adhering to good agricultural practices regarding pruning, watering, fertilising, treating and harvesting the crop. In Iran, information and training could go a long way towards reducing the aflatoxin problem in the pistachio crop.
The issue is dramatic due to the strategic value of this crop for Iran, 2nd export product after oil. It is also strategic to the EU who has made significant efforts to convey to Iran the critical importance of making changes in order to comply to its standards, and who is today considering a total ban on pistachio imports from Iran.
SteamLab recognises the importance of implementing a comprehensive quality assurance system around the pasteurisation process and brings its customers support in elaborating a quality plan. Meeting EU standards requires more than just a pasteurisation step, it requires following good agricultural practices, good manufacturing practices, HACCP analysis and implementing procedures and controls to meet those standards.
Moulds and their spores are present on all nuts and it is the management of their development that allow the control of the production of aflatoxins. The pasteurisation process will effectively eliminate the moulds and prevent any further development of aflatoxin. However it is crucial that proper steps are taken before the pasteurisation to prevent the development of the moulds.
Retailers and food industry are not interested in curative processes; they demand assurance of preventive procedures that minimise risk. Combining a HACCP analysis and implementing a solid quality assurance plan will allow, with the SteamLab pasteurisation critical control point, to prevent the development of aflatoxin producing moulds.
SteamLab has developed proprietary technology that pasteurises dry products such as herbs, spices, nuts and dry fruits. The process involves alternating vacuum and steam injection cycles which result in a 10E6 to 10E7 germ reduction. Particularly suited to these dry delicate products it is effective, whether they are whole or in powder form, while minimising the impact of the treatment on the colour, texture and flavour of the product.
The decontamination treatments used until now are fumigation, which is now forbidden in most import countries because of toxic residues and its environmental impact, and irradiation that has encountered strong consumer resistance.
Enter 25 or at www.scientistlive.com/efood
Dr Cameon Ivarsson is with SteamLab AG, Reinarch, Switzerland.www.steamlab.de
