The food and beverage industry’s failure to take the issue of steam quality and purity far more seriously is its greatest oversight, according to a new white paper published today.

Food & drink’s most powerful ingredient details how food and drink are often manufactured, treated, or processed with little or no analysis of the type of steam used. This is despite the quality and purity of steam being fundamental to the healthcare and pharmaceutical industries for many years.

The white paper offers clarity on the confusion surrounding the difference between filtered or culinary steam and its clean alternative, while detailing the risks many businesses leave themselves open to through their failure to use clean steam.

Explaining the importance of including steam within a HACCP management system, the white paper also provides a recommended approach and clarifies the important role clean steam can play in preventing food safety problems, including bacterial growth and contamination.

Written by Francisco Pedrosa, Regional Clean Steam Specialist at Spirax Sarco, the white paper goes on to detail exactly how a business should go about introducing a clean steam process, offering eight operational advantages to food manufacturers using steam in direct contact with their process.

On the launch of the white paper, Pedrosa commented: “The confusion surrounding the difference between filtered and clean steam could be proving very costly to many food and beverage businesses – particularly as a number of other industries manufacturing goods for human consumption have paid close attention to the quality and purity of their steam for many years.

“By understanding the pitfalls of not having a clean steam process in place, what a clean steam process should look like, and the advantages it can deliver, food and beverage companies should soon be making sure clean steam sits at the very top of any list of ingredients.”

Food & drink’s most powerful ingredient: A definitive guide to using a clean steam process in your food & beverage plant is available to download from:http://sxscom.uk/cleansteamfb