Opportunities
IFSH member companies and organizations have access to a number of collaborative and cooperative research opportunities. Find out how to become a member today.
High Pressure Research Consortium (HPRC)
The formation of the NCFST High Pressure Research Consortium (HPRC) follows a highly successful seven-year, industry-supported collaborative Dual Use Science and Technology (DUST) consortium that resulted in development of a novel food sterilization technology, pressure assisted thermal sterilization (PATS). PATS was accepted in February 2009 by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as a new alternative to commercially sterilize low-acid canned food products.
The HPRC builds on the step-change science of the award-winning PATS technology, which was recognized in June 2009 by the Institute of Food Technologists (IFT) with a prestigious IFT Food Expo Innovation Award acknowledging the major technical advancement represented by the novel method. This consortium offers food and packaging companies a ground-floor opportunity to collaborate and solve technical and business issues related to pressure-enhanced sterilization (PES) technology at a substantially lower individual cost and at a faster pace than companies proceeding independently.
The HPRC has already enrolled several industry members, including Basic American Foods, Campbell Soup, Michael Foods, PepsiCo, Avure Technologies, and the U.S. Army Natick Soldier Research, Development and Engineering Center. IFSH is actively seeking new members in the food packaging and manufacturing sectors that understand the potential of the technology, share a common desire to aggressively pursue advancing HPP technology, and have the desire to mitigate the risk and collaborate on technical issues.
Low Moisture Foods Task Force
Recent outbreaks have raised concerns regarding the safety of low moisture foods. Since 2006 alone, there have been 10 reported outbreaks of Salmonella and E. coli with 1,894 confirmed cases of illness and nine deaths associated with consumption of low moisture foods, including seeds, nuts, spices, peanut butter, puffed cereals and snacks, pet food and cookie dough. However, while the need to minimize microbial food safety hazards in low moisture foods has become apparent, few best practices exist and information on the levels of contamination and modes of natural contamination is also lacking for many dry ingredients. In addition, there is little consensus among scientists as to which method(s) of inoculating dry foods are most appropriate and increasing concern that current methods for inoculum preparation may lead to lower survival and heat resistance.
Reduction of microbial contamination to a level sufficient to increase the safety of low moisture foods may be achieved by using a number of processing methods. In order to establish minimum process conditions for controlling foodborne pathogens in dry foods and to develop necessary tools to validate pasteurization processes in the field, important consideration must be given to strain selection, including prevalence, relevance to the product and resistance to the processing treatment.
The Low Moisture Foods Task Force provides a significant opportunity for IFSH members to work collaboratively to quickly deliver against key science objectives in the area of pathogen risk reduction for low moisture foods. The task force aims to identify risk assessment and mitigation strategies for low moisture foods, including appropriate treatments for destruction of pathogens and storage conditions to prevent recontamination and/or growth of pathogens.