On September 24, the American company providing ozone technology Cyclopss Corporation announced that, following the recent approval of ozone by the US Food & Drug Administration (FDA), it has completed its first contract for an in-plant test of its Eco Pure™ Food Safety System for poultry processing. The Eco Pure™ cold-water ozone system was tested to collect data and assess benefits over the existing chlorine-based system currently being used in the poultry plant for the control of food borne micro-organisms. The results prompted the poultry processor to expand the contract to include installing a full-scale production system in the facility to collect ongoing performance data over an extended period for evaluation. Plans are also being discussed with this processor to test an Eco Pure™ System in a separate plant that produces other poultry products. The FDA approved ozone for use in all food processing activities in June 2001. Up until that ruling, ozone was only approved for use in the disinfection of bottled drinking water. "Ozone not only kills E. Coli 3,125 times faster than chlorine," says Dr. Durand Smith, Cyclopss president and director of R&D, "but it also does this aggressive microbial destruction leaving no chemical residuals or odour behind on the foods or in the process water." One of the core components of the Eco Pure™ System is a new proprietary technology that allows ozone to be produced directly in water at high levels during use, which eliminates many of the engineering challenges that have restricted ozone's easy replacement of highly chlorinated water in these applications. In addition, ozone converts back into oxygen during the act of killing microorganisms, it produces far less polluted wastewater for the processor to deal with.
