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Food safety ‘Safety begins at
home’, is something I learnt as a child. Well at Pres-Free safety begins with
the home of the drying, it is here where we believe we have a significant
differential from the usual dried fruits because we batch process we maintain
the connection with the dryer. This motivates the dryer-operative to choose the
best tastiest fresh fruit, for which they have skill, and make the best job of
drying it with pride in their work which reflects in their bottom line. We
charge a premium rate for the best tasting dried fruit, most of this goes to
them. The dryer operatives
work within our approved guidelines and certifications. Our suppliers are
inspected before we begin offering their fruit lines and at regular intervals
afterwards. Food safety continues
at Pres-Free where we make some fundamental tests for moisture content, taste
and micro-biological activity. Further safety checks are made maintaining the
food standards of the packaging premises and packaging procedures. Final checks
are made following packaging. Natural
Preservation Sugar is the basis of
fruit preservation, high sugar fruits like dates, grapes and prunes are the
most common dried fruit because the high sugar content means you need to remove
less water and so the process is more straightforward. However these natural
fruit sugars are different to artificial sugars, most notable in the taste of
the combination! The moisture content
of the dried fruit is a useful measure of dryness but the important value is
what is called the ‘water activity’. This is the water that is free to help the
microbes live and multiply. Quite a lot of water is firmly bound, for example
to sugars. Microbes are the
opposition to preservation, they cause rot, and some rot makes us sick. By
drying fruit we make an environment that they cannot multiply quicker than
microbes naturally die. We can help keep the microbe level low by having clean
fruit with low microbe level; this is ‘good house-keeping’ and selecting prime
un-rotted fruit. Killing all the microbes with sulphur reduces their numbers
the most. Refrigeration is an
ally in the fight against microbes by keeping their multiplication rate low;
storage of most dried fruit around 5C is a good way of having a shelf life of
years. In Australia the fruit
fly is a pest that has been kept at bay for decades, in dried fruit the eggs if
they have survived drying process can be killed by a deep freeze for around
about a day. Natural preservation
will lead to a good shelf life unless some microbes get past our defences; we
make tests to protect against this. We quote a conservative shelf-life as a
precaution against this happening. Artificial
Preservation and Drying Preservation is most
commonly carried out with sulphur especially for apricots; this has two big
effects to kill microbes by forming dilute sulphurous acid and to break the
cell walls, which increases rate of drying. The sulphur also helps colour the
fruit and prevents oxidation, this is seen when low concentrations of sulphur
species are used to preserve apple and banana and preventing the browning. However
some asthma sufferers react badly to sulphur and it is not an environmentally
friendly oxide. Low sulphur preservation using meta-bisulphites are used on
many fruits and vegetables, other weak acids such as vinegar are also used to
preserve, especially common for tomatoes. Sugar preservation is used commonly
for tropical fruit such as mango and papaya and the taste of this product is so
poor compared to natural preservation. However the process is double action,
not only preventing microbes from multiplying but also carrying out some of the
drying by osmosis. The ultimate sugar preservation of fruit is glace fruit,
which has a long shelf life and is very sugary. Alcohol, ethanol, is another
quite common preservative which both desiccates and preserves with the alcohol
and fruit sugars and moisture forming a tasty liquor as well as preserved,
often whole, fruit. |