Product and environmentally friendly Smoking Process sends strong Signal for Food Industry Transformation
After three years of CleanSmoke Organic Educational Campaign, CleanSmoke is now approved for organic products. The Directorate of the EU Agricultural Commission has granted the application for approval of the process submitted by the German Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture. One of the conditions was the given comparability with conventional smoking processes. The CleanSmoke process is ideally suited for smoking organic foods. This is now further confirmed by the CleanSmoke Coalition’s participation in this year’s BIOFACH trade fair (Hall 5, Stand 5-439). At the leading trade fair, information will be provided together with organic manufacturers about the application and benefits of the smoking process for products, people and the environment.
CleanSmoke is free of harmful substances
Products smoked with the CleanSmoke process are safe for consumption and offer a number of advantages over conventionally smoked products. This is because in conventional smoking, harmful substances such as ash, tar or the dangerous polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) enter the food with the smoke and are consumed with it. By contrast, smoking with physically pre-cleaned smoke, CleanSmoke, is free of harmful substances such as tar and ash. Also the contamination with polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) is largely eliminated.
Fresh smoke is generated under controlled conditions from untreated sawdust. Afterwards it is purified of undesirable substances through a water phase in a multi-stage filter process. Regenerated as smoke with compressed air, CleanSmoke is then fed into the smoking chamber via nozzles – as in conventional smoking. This allows the use of different hot and cold smoking processes. Food smoked with CleanSmoke, in addition to saving resources, makes an important contribution to workplace and food safety.
“The organized smoking sector needs to show what it can do to meet today’s challenges, what it contributes to sustainability, healthy diets and food diversity. Then it will also play a role in shaping food markets,” said Uwe Vogel, chairman of the CleanSmoke Coalition.
Strong signal from the organic sector
The biggest disruptive processes in the food sector have always come from the organic industry. For example, the transformation toward plant-based meat substitutes and greater animal welfare was initiated by the organic industry. The approval of the environmentally friendly and pollutant-free CleanSmoke process for organic products also sends a strong signal. Jürgen Michalzik, head of the CleanSmoke Organic Educational Campaign, summarizes the concept and objective of the CleanSmoke Coalition’s Europe-wide organic campaign: “Since the leading impulses for the necessary sustainable-ecological transformation of our food economy is increasingly coming from organic producers and organic consumers, we will soon see the CleanSmoke seal on many smoked products throughout the trade.”
The first organic products smoked with CleanSmoke are already available in stores. They can be sampled at the BIOFACH trade show July 26-29 in Nuremberg, Germany. There will also be a presentation by the CleanSmoke Coalition with early organic users (July 26 from 17:15 in the Room “Seoul”). Together they provide information on the benefits of the product- and environmentally-friendly smoking process .