Processing
aids are not considered ingredients, however, and therefore are not required to
be listed on ingredient lists on nutrition labels.
Both the
U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the U.S. Department of Agriculture
approve processing aids for foods ranging from meat and poultry to other food
products. They are not supposed to change the appearance or taste of the
product in any way and, more importantly, they cannot negatively impact food
safety or public health
.
Anything
added to food, including processing agents, is regulated as a food additive.
That means the processing agent must be “generally recognized as safe,” or
GRAS, in order to be approved for use in foods. Food additives and processing
agents are either on the GRAS list because of their history of safety, or
because companies who use them have gone through scientific processes to prove
their safety.
Both
agencies recognize three types of processing aids: those that are used and
removed, those that are converted into components that naturally occur at
insignificant levels without changing the finished product, and some that
remain in food at low levels without any technical or functional effect.
Not all
processing aids are as complicated as BPI’s ammonia process or
transglutaminase. Take hot water and steam, for example. Thermal processing of
beef carcasses using hot water and/or steam is a processing aid that’s been
highly effective in reducing E. coli O157:H7 and other pathogens, according to
Janet Riley at the American Meat Institute. Hot water and steam leave no
residues and have no lasting effect on the product.
The use of
high-pressure washes in ready-to-eat lunchmeats and hot dogs has virtually
eliminated the Listeria monocytogenes,
in these products. As recently as the late 1980s, Listeria seemed to some to be
an insolvable problem for the ready-to-eat products.
Killing
antimicrobials is just one of the functions processing aids play during the
food production process. Others include removing impurities, preventing
crystallization, controlling pH levels, controlling bacteria in chill water,
scalding agents that remove feathers, and others.
Not every
solution can be applied to every product, however. For example, restrictions on
Kosher and Halal meats dictate that thermal processes cannot be used. And
processing aids that are effective on one pathogen strain might not work on
another. That’s something researchers are dealing with now, as there are six
strains of E. coli that have recently
been banned from beef, in addition to E. coli
O157:H7, which has been banned since 1993.
Source: http://www.foodsafetynews.com/files/2013/05/Listex-P100-Final-Report-1-2.pdf
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