Oct 27: In a high-tech laboratory at Nebraska Innovation Campus, Mary-Grace Danao places packaged pet food into a small, blue, plastic tub and sends it into a silver-colored chamber that submits it to high pressure — extraordinary pressure, six times that of the Pacific Ocean’s farthest depths.
This is high pressure processing, a pasteurization technique increasingly used by the food industry to remove pathogens such as bacteria and viruses while extending shelf life and maintaining nutrition. HPP is on a dramatic upswing in the food industry — for human and pet food — in response to consumer demand for minimally processed foods.
Raw pet food, with an emphasis on minimal processing and a lack of fillers, is the fastest-growing segment of the pet food industry, “and we’ve developed the reputation as the go-to place if you want HPP for your product,” Danao said.
Leadership and strategic visioning by Danao, research associate professor in the Department of Food Science and Technology and the Department of Biological Systems Engineering, has helped position the University of Nebraska–Lincoln at the forefront of HPP-focused food safety research in partnership with private industry. The Food Processing Center is part of the Department of Food Science and Technology.
On Oct. 30, the Food Innovation Center — which houses the Department of Food Science and Technology, the Food Processing Center and specialized research programs — will host a public open house, where attendees can see firsthand the research, technology and expertise supporting the state’s food and agriculture industries. Register here.
The Food Processing Center’s collaboration with private industry, including Danao’s product-specific research and training for food industry personnel, helps strengthen the state’s multibillion-dollar pet food sector, a major Nebraska employer with more than two dozen manufacturing plants across the state.
The lab has a Biosafety Level 2 (moderate risk) designation, for example, enabling Danao and colleagues to do food safety research by inoculating a food item with a virus or bacteria and then identifying product-specific HPP specifications required to eliminate the pathogen.
As the lab’s reputation has grown, companion animal nutritionists have reached out to Danao to bolster their understanding of high pressure processing in pet food preparation, and Canadian scientists have made contact, since high-level HPP research equipment is a rarity for that country’s universities.
Danao showed foresight in securing HPP equipment with capabilities and versatility beyond those at other universities, and her lab’s reputation for research excellence and collaborative strength are opening up major new opportunities:
- Dark-cutting beef. In a published paper in Applied Food Research, Danao and colleagues demonstrated HPP’s ability to increase meat product options for the beef sector. Specifically, the researchers focused on dark-cutting beef, which is off-putting to consumers due to its purplish color. The resulting study showed that HPP at specific settings can give the meat a normal-looking appearance while retaining nutritional value and proper texture, boosting the meat’s marketability.
- Avian influenza containment. Cats have a particularly strong susceptibility to the avian influenza virus, and food provides a central source of infection, most often through unpasteurized milk and raw or undercooked meat. To enhance the safety of pet food, Danao is in discussions for collaboration with Dustin Loy, director of the Nebraska Veterinary Diagnostic Center, and Hiep Vu, an associate professor of animal science and an internationally recognized expert in animal virology. “HPP technology provides for a potential robust enhancement for pet food safety and would be an ideal solution for emerging challenges such as viral pathogens,” Loy said. “Effective application of this technology would allow the associated industries to not only enhance pet food safety, but provide additional products and subsequent economic impact to the state’s agricultural and food systems.”
- Educational outreach. Danao’s outreach to Nebraska Extension educators, veterinary students and Husker undergraduates majoring in nutrition help them understand HPP food safety processes.
The university’s “expertise in food safety, HPP research and extension programs help move new ideas from the laboratory into practical applications that benefit food manufacturers and consumers alike,” said Frank Jimenez, CEO of Universal Pure, a Lincoln-based company that manufactures machinery for animal foods, as well as human food products and beverages. “Together, we're helping advance the understanding and adoption of high-pressure processing across the industry.”
Rob Peregrina, director of Hiperbaric USA Corp., which supplies the Husker lab’s advanced equipment, said Danao and her team
“bring a level of scientific rigor and practical relevance to HPP research that directly benefits the food industry.”
Workshops Danao leads for food industry personnel “are particularly impactful because they bridge the gap between the science of high pressure processing and its real-world application,” Peregrina said.
Citing the striking scale of HPP equipment at the university and in local private industry, Danao said,
“Lincoln, Nebraska, truly is the HPP capital of North America. Within a five-mile radius, the concentration of HPP expertise, capacity, equipment — it's here. So, if you want to know HPP, you come to Lincoln, Nebraska.”
