Decontamination with Ice, Fighting Campylobacter in chicken production

Poultry production, the world ́s fastest growing meat sector, is facing serious problems because of the high incidence of food-borne diseases, lack of efficient cooling, ever-stricter food safety regulsation, and concerns about food waste and environmental impact. In Europe every year more than 9 million people are being infected by Campylobacter or other food bacteria. ThorIce's new solution DeConIce shows promising results as a highly efficient cooling method and as a method for dramatic reduction of Campylobacter on chicken skin without using disinfectant chemicals, pharmaceuticals or soaps; but by using a unique combination of water and ice. It is slush-ice that cools down the chicken meat in the production. The project represents the whole value chain (research, technology provider, food industry and end-users), and is perfectly aligned to bring a completely new solution to market and ensure its cost-effective implementation into European poultry industry. The project's objective is to finetune the technical parts of the DeConIce solution and conduct two 'real-life full-scale demonstrators' at two poultry factories in France. The objective is also to secure an independent scientific and statistical analysis of the reduction of campylobacter level on chicken meat and make a risk analysis of its potential to reduce food poisoning in Europe. During the project ThorIce will update its business strategy and ramp-up production capacity to meet expected rise in demand. After completion of the FTI project, ThorIce will be well positioned to become the leading supplier of equipment for eco-friendly bacteria decontamination and chilling of poultry to the 4 major equipment suppliers to the poultry industry, Marel (IS), Meyn (NL), Baader-Linco (D) and FoodMate (US) which controls more than 80 % of the world market. With the FTI grant ThorIce can increase Speed to Market, which is vital, as there are more than 25 thousand people getting food infections every day in Europe.