I noticed the summary of yr second link contained -
"Vigorously washing fruits and vegetables with safe water reduces the number of microorganisms by 10-100-fold and is often as effective as treatment with 200 ppm chlorine." Interestingly, I have seen similar words used for seafood in the past.
Dear Charles C,
I think that the use of chlorine is not necessary as long as your equiepement allows you to keep the washing water clean. Yet, our machine is quite old and the salad is being washed for about 15min in the same water without any fresh water coming in. So, if there is mo water sanitizing agent present, then will the salad not be recontaminated by the bacteria in the water? So I think that the use of chlorine actually helps preventing recontamination of the product by keeping the water clean and in that way, the washing time can be increased.
What we actually do, in order to improve the efficiency is that we add organic acids to lower the pH of the washing water. Now if I read the document of your first link, there is written that the pH value should be kept between 7,2 to 7,6 to keep a high active chlorine concentration. When I look at the following graph:
http://www.edstrom.c....cfm?doc_id=164I would tend to say that our process is more effective (pH=4,0) as the active chlorine concentration at this pH value is higher than at pH=7,2.
So what would be the best pH value in your opinion?
One thing that surprised me was that that most of the refs seemed to depend on quite old data (pre 2000). People have become rather more sensitive with respect to residues these days. I found this link detailing the procedure whereby one of the other newer chemicals for this type of application was approved. May be interesting to you.
http://www.foodstand...les/A393_FA.pdf.
The link is indeed very interesting and it is strange that there is no newer data available (at least I didn't find any).
What I do not understand is that the disinfecting process of raw vegetables is mentioned in the GHP for caterers issued here in Luxembourg, but there is actually no list of approved products.
The problem could be that we are a small country with not many experts in the food sector and so I can understand that there can not be as many regulations, recommandations as in the US, Canada or Australia where you have a lot more people to discuss these issues and work on them...
But alas this does not solve my problem so I guess that I will have to refer to the publications of these countries...
So, first of all I'll ask our supplier whether our product is approved for food contact somewhere...
Thanks a lot for taking the time to answer!!!
Regards,
Max