Ozone treatment in meat processing

I am interested in whether or not ozone is commonly used within the European Communities or anywhere else for food proccessing applications, mainly meat processing.

I have had some contact with firms over the past few weeks who sell equipment which can ozonate water which can then be used to clean processing surfaces, as well as be used to rinse carcasses and meat cuts with ozonated water whch is considered as "potable." I haven't heard too much about the use of ozone, however, outside of some uses in cold storage facilties/meat packaging and was curious if anyone had any experience with ozonation equipment in meat processing. I know it's legal to use in the United States having been approved by both the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the U.S. Deparment of Agriculture (USDA); however, I was unsure about its use elsewhere.

Hi Meatyguy, I'm bumping your topic in the hope you might get a reply from the forum. In the meantime welcome to the forums.



Regards,
Simon

Dear meatyguy,

No direct experience ozone myself but some googling got this which you may well know already of course –

Chlorine-based compounds still retain a majority share of the market with an estimated 40.7 per cent of the total revenues in the European water and wastewater disinfection systems market in 2006. The current use of chlorine gas and liquid chlorine in Europe continues to be high, particularly in the municipal water and wastewater disinfection segment, but their revenues could be affected due to the formation of disinfection by-products (DBPs) in these methods. "Due to the issue of DBPs in conventional chlorination methods, the demand for UV and ozonation disinfection as well as advanced chlorination methods such as chlorine dioxide-based disinfection is expected to increase in the municipal drinking water segment," says the analyst. "The use of UV is expected to rise during the forecast period by eating into the share of the chlorine-based compounds.

"

(2006 link)

http://www.mindbranc...ewater-R1-5815/

Maybe now too old (1998) to be trusted but another link commented France primarily (then) used ozone ? Reason unknown, the French always like to be different ?

http://www.lenntech....-regulation.htm

The above was primarily for water applications I guess. Direct use on foods seems to hv been more (but not exclusively) developed outside of Europe (USA, Australia [?] ??). A sort of mini-review (2007) is in this article -

ozone_Annex22ValenciaConferenceainiaozonecip.pdf   273.82KB   63 downloads

I noted that specific legislation ca. 2002 was required in USA for direct food applications. Like yr own comment, maybe situation is different elsewhere (I didn't see any ref. to specific regulations), less strict ?? The advent of "Organic" foods seems to be having some influence also.
Examples of use on meat as per yr posted query seems very elusive indeed.

Any ozone users reading this ?


Rgds / Charles.C

added - also saw this interesting detailed timeline for introduction of water ozonation, a surprisingly long history-

http://www.biozone.c...y_timeline.html

Anyone else got experience of ozone use either in meat or other industries?

Ozone is generally used for water disinfection but i know it is also used for meat, fruit and vegetables and fried food.
It is also helpful for making the colour lighter as an oxidiser.
My friends company was using ozone as for disinfection of fruit and vegetables and effect it reaaly good on micro levels.

I have used ozone in the past to disinfect packaging prior to filling and found it to be effective for surface disinfection. We were looking to remove Yeasts & Moulds.

Regards,

Tony