Hazard control through processing and preservation technologies for enhancing the food safety management of infant food chains

Food safety of infant foods is of paramount importance due to the high vulnerability of this population. Food business operators guarantee safety of the products they put on the market by implementing control measures that prevent, eliminate, reduce, or keep relevant physical, microbiological and/or chemical hazards to an acceptable level. It is essential that the efficacy of control measures is validated during process design and on-line monitoring and periodic verification activities are implemented during the commercial production. Infant foods are usually processed through conservative thermal treatments that guarantee food safety but usually negatively affect the organoleptic properties, reduce vitamin and nutrient contents. Heat treatments can trigger the formation of process induced contaminants.The EU-SAFFI project aims to set and validate new/emerging processing and preservation technologies (i.e. pulse combustion drying, radiofrequency and high pressure processing) to control key contaminants and pathogens as efficiently as classical technologies and to provide a decision support system to manage food safety in infant food. This article describes how the project is addressing the research to control (i) furan, a key process-induced toxicant in infant food whose formation is induced during thermal preservation processes of foods such as infant formulas and jarred baby foods, (ii) tropane alkaloids, natural contaminants found in agricultural crops due to accidental harvesting of weeds whose presence above the maximum regulated levels have been documented in cereal-based foods for infants and children and (iii) different vegetative and spore forming bacterial pathogens, a group of microbiological hazards with product and technology-specific relevance and resistance.