How process water recycling supports global food safety

Safe, nutritious food is essential to good health and sustaining life. However, the World Bank has calculated that poor food hygiene comes at a global cost of $100 billion a year to low- and middle-income economies. “Food safety receives relatively little policy attention and is under-resourced,” says Juergen Voegele, Senior Director of the Food and Agriculture Global Practice at the World Bank. “Action is normally reactive—to major foodborne disease outbreaks or trade interruptions—rather than preventative.” Furthermore, every year almost 1 in 10 people around the world (a total of 600 million) fall ill after eating contaminated food and 420 000 die, according to a study by the World Health Organization (WHO). 550 million cases of illness and 230 000 deaths are the result of diarrhoeal diseases. Issues related to food safety primarily affect infants, young children, the elderly and the sick, and are largely the result of unsafe food containing harmful bacteria, viruses, parasites or chemical substances. Although great advances have been made in recent decades in the area of water, sanitation and hygiene (WSH) interventions, food safety has received relatively less attention. Foodborne diseases put pressure on health care systems, and can severely impact economies, tourism and trade. The WHO has recently pointed out that food safety is becoming an increasingly important to achieving their developmental goals. In the Organization’s view, food safety systems should keep pace with developments in the area of growing food supply and dedicated policies need to be developed for this. Cross-contamination in the handling of produce is one common source of infection. That’s why washing fruit and vegetables using water is essential to food safety. Cleaning crops helps remove bacteria such as E.coli, Listeria and Salmonella, as well as spores of fungi and mould and traces of pesticides from the surface. In many developing areas, however, water is relatively scarce, and clean water is relatively costly. In fact, the World Economic Forum recently named water scarcity as one of the largest global risks over the next decade. Of course, clean water is also required for agricultural processes themselves, placing an even greater strain on supply. In developed countries, water may be more freely available, people do not want to use water and energy unnecessarily for environmental and cost reasons. In both cases, recycling process water provides a solution. Washing water no longer needs to be replaced every time a new batch of produce is cleaned, saving millions of litres in just a few years with no compromise on hygiene. As the water cycle is essentially a closed circuit system, no water discharge is required. As a result, environmental costs and pollution are reduced to a minimum. Food safety and product shelf-life are optimized and residue levels limited. Recycling washing water not only contributes significantly to enhancing food safety, but also helps reduce contamination of valuable soil and water supplies In developing countries, water is scarce and low access to potable water is a key cause of contamination risk, making it particularly important that food is adequately cleaned before distribution. In other regions, environmental goals have placed low water and energy consumption. VAM WATERTECH helps ensure all produce is cleaned using recycled process water. Our multi-stage purification removes bacteria and pesticides and results in a 95% saving on process water as well as cleaner washing lines and production environments. Get in touch with VAM to find out more or discuss your own requirements!