A new technology that kills dangerous pathogens on food at home and in restaurants, grocery stores, beverage-manufacturing and food-processing facilities has been licensed to the maker of FIT Fruit and Vegetable Wash. The licensing agreement between the University of Georgia Research Foundation Inc. and HealthPro Brands Inc., FIT’s parent company, vastly extends the range of applications for the company’s current anti-microbial food wash.
The new technology, invented by scientists from the University of Georgia Center for Food Safety, can kill significant numbers of dangerous E. coli and salmonella in less than one minute, but it is recommended that the wash be applied from one to five minutes. The technology can be used as a food wash, with commercial applications for the produce, poultry, meat, and egg processing industries.
“The re-formulated FIT food wash will kill more harmful microbes faster,” says Mike Doyle, Center for Food Safety director. “The new anti-microbial food wash is orders of magnitude more powerful and twice faster.”
Doyle is an internationally recognized authority on food safety whose research focuses on developing methods to detect and control food-borne bacterial pathogens at all levels of the food continuum, from farm to table.
“The new technology takes our current FIT product to a whole new level of sanitization,” says Todd Wichmann, president and CEO of HealthPro Brands. “We look forward to getting our improved product into the hands of industry.”
The wash has no effects on smell, taste, or appearance of the foods that are treated. Like the original FIT Fruit and Vegetable Wash now used at home by consumers and by foodservice industry, the new antimicrobial wash uses a combination of two inexpensive components that are safe for humans and the environment. The new FIT product also will be available as a spray and immersion solution for foods ranging from fragile leafy produce, fruits and vegetables, to more robust foods such as meats and poultry, or food preparation equipment and food transportation vehicles. For the greatest efficacy, the product is used at different concentrations and different periods of exposure for different applications.
