MANHATTAN, KAS. — AIB International has added to its catalog of baking process kill step calculators with the addition of a profile for yeast-raised donuts, the organization’s seventh calculator. AIB also offers calculators for nut muffins, cake muffins, whole wheat multigrain bread, crisp cookies, soft cookies, and hamburger buns.
All calculators and published research information are available for free download on AIB’s web site.
According to the AIB, the calculators, along with AIB’s kill step validation consulting services, are empowering bakeries “to validate their food safety preventive controls and accurately evaluate Salmonella destruction in bakery products.”
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| Lakshmikantha Channaiah, director of microbiology at AIB International |
“The food industry has long believed that all biological organisms like yeast or pathogens are killed in the oven, and critical product quality attributes are achieved,” said Lakshmikantha Channaiah, director of microbiology at AIB International. “Under FSMA, the F.D.A. is requiring proof of that theory; however, prior to AIB’s latest contribution, there was not publically available research to use as foundational scientific validation.”
Commercial bakers are able to use the calculators to evaluate the lethality of a thermal process (baking) to destroy Salmonella in their products and demonstrate the effectiveness of the process to comply with FSMA’s preventive controls rule. The interactive calculators work by using oven time and temperature parameters to automatically determine the total process lethality (e.g., 5 log) for Salmonella, AIB said. If the desired log reduction is achieved for the baking process and pathogen of concern, the generated report may be used as guidance and supporting documentation for FSMA’s validation and verification process.
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| Brian Strouts, vice-president of baking and food technical services at AIB International |
“We are committed to the baking industry and this is a demonstrated need as part of FSMA regulations,” said Brian Strouts, vice-president of baking and food technical services at AIB International. “We are glad that businesses can turn to us for help validating their kill steps.”
AIB International collaborated with the American Bakers Association and its Food Technical and Regulatory Affairs Committee, and with researchers at Kansas State University and the University of Georgia to produce the baking process kill step calculators. More than 2,800 industry professionals have downloaded various versions of the calculators since they debuted.
