Despite improvements in production, handling, and distribution of food products in recent years, protecting consumers from foodborne illness is still a challenge. Bedemco’s 5 Log Validated Kill Step for its Fruit Pastes has successfully addressed this challenge.
Fruit pastes are currently an ingredient of choice for many applications, making the quality of the product essential. They are an excellent binder, natural sugar substitute, shelf life extender, and an inexpensive and healthful clean label ingredient for nutritional bars, confections, and baked goods.
Bedemco instituted its 5 Log Validation Kill Step to provide its customers peace of mind when adding its fruit pastes to a recipe.
Kill-step validation is a collection of evidence that a process involving chemical or physical inputs/parameters in a food establishment are consistently delivering a desired effect to ensure the destruction of pathogenic microorganisms often expressed as “log reduction.” Bedemco uses the following process for its fruit pastes:
• They begin with a multi-point inspection including magnets, metal detection, aflatoxin control, and washing the dried fruits to remove any surface impurities.
• The dried fruits are then processed with the perfect ratio of heat to achieve a low microbial count product at the desired moisture level without compromising product quality. (This process has been externally validated to a 5 log kill for both figs and dates.)
• Finished pastes pass through a fine sieve to control pits or pit fragments and are additionally detected using magnets and metal detection to provide the cleanest paste possible under modern technology
Under FSMA, hazards must also be tightly controlled. Seeing the products from whole dried fruits to finished paste that has been washed, heat treated to lower microbial counts, and screened through multiple detection systems ensures the highest level of control possible.
Call Burley Foods at (952) 943-1970 to find out about all of Bedemco’s capabilities, to request samples or schedule a demonstration.