LEDUC, Alta. – Earle Snider attended a recent food technology show to gather new information and ideas.
The wholesale baker said more emphasis on sanitation and food safety makes it important to keep up with the latest technology.
“You always have to be open to new ideas and new possibilities and new ways of doing things or you’ll get into trouble quickly,” Snider of WBS Wholesale Bakery said during the Food Processing Development Centre’s Equipment and Technology Expo in Leduc.
Twenty-six exhibitors from Canada and the United States showed off their latest injection machines, hamburger patty makers, spice kits and conveyor belts for the food processing industry.
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Snider, who is looking for equipment to make work easier for his staff, uses the food centre in Leduc to package his bakery products for prairie health regions.
Snider said the centre’s food scientists have equipment and technology to ensure food is packaged to the exact specifications required by hospitals and health centres.
“The packaging here doesn’t get any better.”
Gord DeJong, the centre’s technical operations manager, said the expo was intended to introduce new technology to Alberta.
“The equipment displayed here is used in other countries. We want to bring the technology to Alberta.”
Alden Worobec, a processing technologist at the centre, created a display of hot dogs with a difference.
They looked like hot dogs, but instead of using processed meat, Woro-bec made them with chunks of meat and spices that are healthier than traditional hot dog meat.
“The idea is that the processor can give the consumer an alternative. Instead of putting a hunk of lard on a roller, you can put something healthier on it.”
He hoped processors touring the centre would get ideas for new food products from his display and possibly use the centre to help develop new food products.
Dave Anderson of Newly Weds, which specializes in seasoning, batters and breading for seafood, chicken, beef, pork and snack food, said the company wanted to introduce itself to Alberta food processors.
On his table were bowls of bourbon pepper and butter chicken potato chips, two of the flavours that can be added to meat or snack food.
“Our claim to fame is marrying good taste to food,” Anderson said.
His company monitors 550 restaurants in the United States to track trends in food and tastes and use that information to develop flavours for other products.
Jack McConnell spent his time at the expo standing beside a Reiser machine that can turn out 300 perfectly formed hamburger patties a minute.
He said the machine is the closest a food processor will get to recreating handmade hamburger patties. The British retailer Marks and Spencer uses the machine to make its premium hamburgers, he added.
He said uniformity is the biggest benefit for processors. The machine will recreate the same hamburger patty plus or minus a gram.
Al Yakoweshen of the Cryovac Sealed Air Corp. said with busier families with less time, it’s important to develop packaging for quick, nutritious, microwaveable food products.
One package puffs up in the microwave and creates a special steam chamber that can evenly cook a piece of chicken in a little more than a minute.
Another made from tapioca has become popular in the United States for heating bakery and pizza products in the oven.
Yakoweshen said the tapioca plate is edible by dogs if flavoured with dog food.
“It gives new meaning to licking the bowl clean.”
