Combat Allergen Contamination & Motor Replacement Issues

Written by Allen Dawson, Meat & Poultry Market Manager

According to the Food Allergy Research Group, 32 million Americans have Food Allergies and 5.6 million are children under the age of 18. That is roughly one in thirteen children. Over 200 Americans die of food allergens every year. This is serious stuff and one of the reasons why Admix powder induction systems are so important to today’s food manufacturers.

Reducing or eliminating this type of cross contamination in the plant is now a high priority as it’s a major USDA violation and can be the cause for massive recalls and lawsuits. Many USDA Inspectors will not even allow any dust in the air after an ingredient bag has been poured into the marination mix tank.

These new contamination issues can be very costly to correct. New Air Make-Up systems complete with hoods and fans are very expensive and major structural changes must be made to install them. In addition, they must be cleaned and inspected daily, requiring ladders and flashlights.

The Admix Optifeed-EZ ergonomic powder feed system is a simple and inexpensive solution to easily and safely incorporate marination powders into your mix tank. It assembles in minutes and is simple to operate, clean and inspect. There is little to no dusting when inducting powders because a sanitary liquid ring pump pulls the ingredients and all of the dust down into the 24” hopper before it is directly piped into your mixing tank. This is very important because if there is excessive dusting, for example if simply dumping powder bags directly into a mixing vessel, there are cross-contamination risks and furthermore, much of the dust gets sucked into the nearest motor through the fan blades that are designed to keep the motor cool. The dust eventually applies so much resistance on the motor that it fails in a matter of months. Over a years’ time it can turn into a very expensive problem to replace those motors.

For meat plants we recommend the Optifeed-EZ because of its:

• Ergonomic design – powder dumping at waste level
• Easy maintenance, operation and cleaning
• Little to no dusting
• Fixed powder feed rates that are optimized for key brine and marinade ingredients
• Single switch design that opens and closes the powder valve and turns off the vibrator

*FARE Food Allergy Research & Education

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