The PPI Annual Meeting at Las Vegas (26.10.2011–28.10.2011) was a meeting point for pickle packers from all over the world. BOGK was represented by Alfred Paulsen, Prof. Dr. Dietmar Breithaupt (Rich. Hengstenberg GmbH und Co. KG) und Christoph Freitag.
Brian Bursiek, Alfred Paulsen, Christoph Freitag, Dr. Gerald Krischke
The congress provided excellent opportunity to meet entrepeneurs and scientists among the 250 participants. There were 23 presentations given in 9 sessions on agriculture, politics, sourcing, manufacturing and technology and many other topics.
BOGK association director Christoph Freitag gave a talk on Managing Food Crises: Lessons from the E.coli outbreak in Germany 2011. (There are downloads available of the slides and the text of the presentation.)
In July 2012 PPI and BOGK plan to organize a field trip through Germany – the heart of the European pickle industry.
Fruit and vegetable products processed in cans and jars are preserved by pasteurization and sterilization. This thermal heating definitely excludes infections caused by EHEC bacteria. Thus, canned fruit and vegetables are a perfect alternative for consumers for all kinds of fruit and vegetables.
This conclusion of the German Fruit, Vegetable and Potato Processing Industries is based on a recent scientific evaluation conducted by the Nehring Institute.
EHEC bacteria are heat-sensitive bacteria that are completely destroyed by high temperatures such as reached during blanching, pasteurization or sterilization of fruit and vegetable products.
It is therefore impossible to detect viable EHEC bacteria in processed fruit and vegetables products that have been treated with one or more of the above-mentioned thermal heating procedures.
Finally, industrially processed fruit and vegetable products that are commercially available at present were processed and harvested in summer 2010 and are therefore not affected by the current infection cases.
