Dairy products

MAP has the potential to increase the shelf life of a number of dairy products.  These include fat-filled milk powders, cheeses and fat spreads.  In general these products spoil due to the development of oxidative rancidity in the case of powders and or the growth of micro-organisms, particularly yeasts and moulds, in the case of cheese.

Whole milk powder is particularly susceptible to the development of off-flavours due to fat oxidation.  Commercially the air is removed under vacuum and replaced with N₂ or N₂/CO₂ mixes and the powder is hermetically sealed in metal cans.  Due to the spray drying process air tends to be absorbed inside the powder particles and will diffuse into the container over a period of 10 days or so.  This typically will raise the residual O₂ content to 1%-5% or higher.  Because some markets require product with low levels of residual O₂(<1%) some manufacturers re-pack the cans after 10 days storage.  Use of O₂ scavenging may also be useful. 

Introduction

EU regulation 1924/2006 on Nutrition and Health claims made on food was published on 18 January 2007. This is the first piece of scientific legislation to deal with nutrition and health claims and aims to provide a higher level of consumer protection as well as harmonise legislation across the EU to facilitate intra-Community trade.

The regulation will control nutrition and health claims by means of positive lists of authorised claims that can be made on food together with the criteria a product must meet to use them. The annex of the regulation contains the list of permitted nutrition claims and the regulation puts in place processes for the compilation of the list of authorised claims. EU regulations are directly applicable in Member States and this regulation will apply from 1 July 2007.