New Mexico Patent of the Month – May 2021
Nevada Naturals Inc., based in New Mexico, develops green and natural bioactive ingredients for use in food, health, and beauty products. Recently, they have been working on a food coating that will help limit bacterial growth in pet food, including salmonella. Pet foods are made with animal fats and by-products which can be subject to contamination during the butchering process. During the pet food production process, there is a step where liquid flavors are added, coating the kibbles to make them tastier for pets. This liquid flavor is often water-based and can further introduce bacteria into the food. Nevada Naturals has developed an emulsifier to penetrate animal fat used in foods and limit pathogen growth.
These emulsifiers are made with sucrose monoesters such as lecithin. This emulsifier is combined with preservatives and a surfactant to help it reach the bacteria within the food. Typical methods at this process fail, since the kibble is so low in moisture that the bacteria goes dormant and does not metabolize the pathogen killer. So Nevada Naturals introduced the surfactants to introduce a small amount of moisture to activate the kill step. Their experiments with this pathogen killer shows a 99% reduction in Salmonella presence. This reduction is effective for 60 days post coating and can also be incorporated into early food prep to reduce pathogen presence from the start.
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