Food quality or profitability (Photo: Fotolia)In this post, Kharla Segovia, Professor of the Official University Master's Degree in Food Safety Management at Bureau Veritas University Center , talks to us about Emerging Technologies in the agri-food sector.
Offering consumers safe foods with excellent sensory and nutritional properties are obviously the main concerns of the food industry. In this regard, research and development of new technologies play a very important role .
After 9 years of research in this area, I dare say that the so-called "Emerging Technologies" represent a significant market opportunity for this industry that is in continuous development. However, their profitability will always be conditioned by the type of product being treated.
To date, the most widely used preservation technology in the twitter data food industry is thermal processing . Processes such as sterilization and pasteurization offer consumers safe food with a generally quite acceptable sensory quality. Furthermore, these technologies give manufacturers the possibility of acquiring machinery and implementing the processes at very reasonable prices.
For this reason, we might ask ourselves: "Why change something that works well in terms of profitability for the industrialist and offers us, as consumers, safe and good quality food?"
The main reason for studying and developing these new technologies lies, in my opinion, in two reasons :
Not all foods and their products are created equal.
Not all consumers are the same.
Non-thermal processes , such as high hydrostatic pressure, electrical pulses or irradiation, have been shown to have very positive effects in the destruction of microorganisms and inactivation of spoilage enzymes in food systems.
Moreover, most of these treatments do not affect the sensory properties of the products , such as texture, colour, smell and flavour. Furthermore, by not applying high temperatures during the process, all those vitamins that are thermo-sensitive and that would be immediately degraded in a traditional thermal process are maintained .
Based on these results, we might assume that these technologies are directly applicable to any food and that their profitability would be guaranteed by the quality of the product offered; but this is not really the case. Emerging technologies generally involve a fairly high initial investment and, depending on the product and the type of market it is aimed at, it will be profitable or not for the industrialist to make the investment .
There is one very specific case, in my personal opinion, where an industrialist should not hesitate to implement a technology of this type: products that can be sold as gourmet . In this case, the return on investment is practically certain; since these safety and quality benefits, of which we speak, can be directly reflected in the price of the final product, and the consumer of this type of products will always be willing to pay more to obtain a better quality product.
A very clear example can be seen in the oyster , which is a highly appreciated product in haute cuisine for its organoleptic qualities, but which has a high incidence of poisoning in consumers .
In this regard, the prestigious chef Joan Roca has presented a very interesting talk at the latest edition of Alimentaria , where he explains how to avoid the problems that affect the treatment of molluscs in the kitchen and how to eliminate the risk of food poisoning caused by viruses and microorganisms without affecting the quality of these products .