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The Food Chain Newsletter is New and Improved

The Food Chain introduces a new look and a new publication schedule. We will now come to you three times a year (Fall, Winter, and Spring) beginning with this issue. The Food Chain continues its commitment to provide you with updates on fiscal year start-up, closeout, and planning activities, in addition to, program news, organization changes, and committee meetings. We hope you like our new look, and we look forward to keeping you abreast of the exciting events shaping Georgia’s food processing industry. Please submit comments and story ideas to Angela Colar, Editor, at angela.colar@gtri.gatech.edu.

FoodPAC Announces Executive Coordinator Change

After more than eight years as FoodPAC Executive Coordinator, Gary Black, President of the Georgia Agribusiness Council, has announced his plans to take a leave of absence from FoodPAC to pursue the Republican nomination for the Office of Georgia Commissioner of Agriculture. Bryan Tolar, Vice President of Public Affairs for the Georgia Agribusiness Council, and Mike Giles, Vice President of the Georgia Poultry Federation, have agreed to serve as FoodPAC Executive Co-Coordinators.

During his tenure as FoodPAC Executive Coordinator, Gary has been instrumental in developing the program into a highly regarded research program and a shining example of a successful public-private partnership among Georgia’s food industry, its universities, and state agencies. He is also recognized for his commitment to enhancing the food processing infrastructure of the University System of Georgia, laying the financial cornerstone for the renovation, expansion, and/or construction of major research facilities at the University of Georgia and the Georgia Tech Research Institute. Thanks Gary and Good Luck.

Call for Proposals to be Issued

FoodPAC will be releasing its Call for Proposals for the FY 2007 Research Program in early November via email (if you would like to be added to the email distribution list, send an email to kristi.spivey@gtri.gatech.edu). The proposal format will also be available on the Web at www.foodpac.gatech.edu. Project proposals are due Monday, February 6, 2006.

Annual Report Available Soon

Final reports for FY 2005 FoodPAC projects have been received, and the FoodPAC Fiscal Year 2005-2006 Report to Industry is scheduled to be available in early December. A copy of the report will also be available on FoodPAC’s website.

FoodPAC Meets to Establish FY 2007 Research Program Funding Plan

FoodPAC held its Summer Meeting in Georgia Tech’s new Food Processing Technology Building (see write-up on page 2 for more information on the new building). At the meeting, Committee members voted to establish the FY 2007 Program Funding Plan. The Committee agreed that it would submit to the Governor’s Office of Planning and Budget a FY 2007 request level of $1 million in general funds and $300,000 in bond funds.

Pictured clockwise from left: Craig Wyvill, Mike Doyle, Mike Giles, Adrienne Thorpe, Dan Craig, Bob Lauxen, Wayman Hollis, Steve Woodruff, Ann Hollingsworth, Dale Threadgill, Jimmy Hill, Charles Hall, Skip Chandler, John Leszczynski, Steve Carr.

Not pictured but also present at the meeting were Charles Estes, Reggie Prime, and Erin Schwartz.

Proposal Submission Information Sessions Planned

FoodPAC will hold two Proposal Submission Information Sessions in Atlanta, Ga., and Athens, Ga., during November. Details will be posted online at www.foodpac.gatech.edu once they become available. Hosted by Craig Wyvill, FoodPAC Program Proposal Coordinator, the 2-hour sessions are open to seasoned and new researchers, and provide an overview of the proposal submission process along with a question/answer period.

FoodPAC (Food Processing Advisory Council) is a public-private partnership among the food industry, Georgia’s institutions of higher education, and Georgia’s state agencies. FoodPAC seeks to enhance the competitiveness of Georgia’s food processing and allied industries in order to provide for economic growth through expansion of existing industries and the attraction of new food-related industries.

The Food Chain is a publication of the Food Processing Advisory Council and is produced three times a year by Georgia Tech’s Food Processing Technology Division, Atlanta, Georgia, 30332-0823.

Angela Colar, Editor (404) 463-1417 angela.colar@gtri.gatech.edu

FoodPAC Committee Leadership

Steering Committee

Steve Woodruff (Chair)
WHEE, Inc.
(770) 844-0037
swoodruff@wheeinc.com

Reggie Prime (Vice Chair)
Coca-Cola Enterprises Inc.
(770) 989-3144
rprime@na.cokecce.com

Mike Giles (Executive Co-Coordinator)
Georgia Poultry Federation
(770) 532-0473
mike@gapf.org

Bryan Tolar (Executive Co-Coordinator)
Georgia Agribusiness Council
(706) 336-6830
btolar@ga-agribusiness.org

Environmental Technical Committee

Dan Craig (Chair)
Gold Kist Inc.
(770) 479-4060
dan.craig@goldkist.com

Dale Threadgill (University Coordinator)
University of Georgia
(706) 542-1653
tgill@engr.uga.edu

Food Safety and Health Technical Committee

Bob Lauxen (Chair)
Keystone Foods
(256) 964-1086
bob.lauxen@keystonefoods.com

Mike Doyle (University Coordinator)
University of Georgia
(770) 228-7284
mdoyle@uga.edu

Process and Product Improvement Technical Committee

Ann Hollingsworth (Chair)
Better Built Foods, LLC
(770) 854-4473
annholl@bellsouth.net

Craig Wyvill (University Coordinator)
Georgia Tech
(404) 894-3412
craig.wyvill@gtri.gatech.edu

Georgia Tech Holds Dedication Ceremony for New Food Processing Technology Building

The Georgia Institute of Technology held a Dedication Ceremony/Open House this past May for the multimillion dollar state-of-the-art Food Processing Technology Building. Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue was on hand to officially dedicate the facility, which was partially funded with FoodPAC dollars ($4.7 million).

“Innovations are making lives better and moving industry forward,” said Governor Perdue. “This facility will be a great place to develop the future of food processing and test prototypes of products that people will want, and will help grow jobs in the value-added agricultural fields.”

The building contains offices and research laboratories for automation, information, and environmental technology development; a 4,370-square-foot high-bay prototyping area; a 48-seat auditorium; a large conference room for industrial and organizational meetings and events; and an interactive lower lobby exhibit highlighting the growing role technology is playing in food and poultry processing operations.

The Food Processing Technology Building is the third and last of three infrastructure improvement projects that received funding from FoodPAC in the late 1990s. The expansion of the University of Georgia’s Center for Food Safety (approximately $8 million) in Griffin, Ga., and the Food Science Building ($4.2 million) in Athens, Ga., were the first and second projects, respectively.

Volunteer Overseas with the Citizens Network for Foreign Affairs

The Citizens Network for Foreign Affairs (CNFA) is looking for food processing experts to volunteer with struggling food processors in Ukraine, Belarus, and Moldova. We offer an opportunity to use your food processing experience to fight poverty by developing businesses. Our volunteers work at the grassroots level with locally owned businesses to help bring prosperity to places that haven’t known much. We’re looking for volunteers to share their knowledge at places like Myrgorod Cannery in Ukraine, where we’re working with cannery employees and managers to improve food safety, or at AgroEcoLux Fruit Cooperative in Moldova, where we’re working with fruit growers and fruit processors to forge connections that benefit both.

This year we’ve only just begun our work with food processors. Over the next year, we’re going to need people with experience in vegetable processing, business planning and marketing for food processors, dairy processing, and honey processing. If you have food processing expertise that you want to share with people in poor countries, then give us a call!

Our volunteer assignments are 16-19 days long, and CNFA pays all expenses related to the assignment. We know that this is a lot to ask, but this is also a chance to see a part of the world that few Americans have the opportunity to visit.

CNFA is a nonprofit organization funded by the U.S. government’s Farmer-to-Farmer Program. For more information, please visit our web site at www.cnfa.org. Click on “Volunteer Now,” and you’ll be able to see our list of available assignments and apply for the ones that interest you. You can also contact Eric Wallace by email at ewallace@cnfa.org or by phone at (202) 296-3920. We hope to hear from you soon.

PROJECT SPOTLIGHT

The Development of Uses for Eggshells as an Alternative to Landfill

Each year in Georgia alone, more than 37 million pounds of eggshells are directed to landfills. Such a large amount of waste is both an environmental (rotting shells generate malodors and attract pests) and economical (companies pay upward of $100,000 annually to depose of the eggshells) problem. With many landfills nearing capacity, this FY 2006 FoodPAC research project is focused on developing an alternative to landfills that extracts value-added byproducts from eggshell waste.

“For years some of these eggshells have been converted by the rendering industry into animal feed supplements. And these same eggshells also have components of value to the papermaking, pharmaceutical, and biochemistry industries,” explains Jeff Hsieh, a professor in the Georgia Tech School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and the study’s principal investigator. Hsieh and his research team are concentrating their efforts on using the main component, calcium carbonate (CaCO3), in papermaking applications.

According to Hsieh, the eggshells are approximately 95 percent calcium carbonate and 4.5 percent membrane. The calcium carbonate in the eggshells, he says, can be a substitute for mined minerals used to improve brightness, opacity, and strength in paper. The eggshell membrane, on the other hand, contains 10 percent collagen, which can possibly be used as a raw material in the manufacture of amino acids. The remainder of the membrane can be used as an additive for animal feed.

A key problem, however, is how to completely separate the calcium carbonate from the membrane in an economically and environmentally sound method. Over the past year, Hsieh and his team have taken the initial steps to solve the problem.

The research team has developed a lab unit that successfully separates the calcium carbonate from the membrane by using a water/air mixture. The unit first grinds the eggshells; then the ground eggshells are mixed with water. The mixture of the eggshell powder and the water is put into a countercurrent column with a water/air mixture pumped up from the bottom. The water and air separate the membrane from the calcium carbonate with the carbonate falling to the bottom and the membrane floating off the top, resulting in a collection of both products.

The team field tested the unit at American Dehydrated Foods, Inc.’s (a leader in the processing of underutilized agricultural raw materials into superior value-added products) plant in Social Circle, Ga. During the test, the unit successfully separated nearly 100 percent of the calcium carbonate from the membrane.

Having successfully separated the calcium carbonate from the membrane, the research team, together with EvCo Research, LLC, has just begun to evaluate the use of the calcium carbonate as pigment in paper coating formulations. EvCo, a supplier of coating and wet end treatment chemicals to the paper industry, has shown that some of its coating chemicals can be used in inkjet printing formulations and give improved results.

“We are interested in determining whether coatings based on our chemistry and used with calcium carbonate from eggshells would offer some synergistic benefit for the inkjet printing application,” says John Kokoszka, vice president of EvCo.

Imerys, a Georgia-based mineral processor, is assisting in the processing of the calcium carbonate so that it can be usable for applications in the paper or other industries.

Hsieh says successful completion of this project will provide tangible benefits for both the poultry and paper industries. “This project will solve a landfill problem for the poultry industry and recover eggshell waste destined for the landfill and transform it into a value-added product for the paper industry.”

RESEARCHER PROFILE

John Stewart

Principal Investigator of two FY 2006 Projects:

“Overline Imaging System for Detecting Foreign Object Material on Food Processing Lines”

“Non-contact Core Temperature Monitoring of Cooked Meat Products”

Job title: Senior Research Engineer in the Food Processing Technology Division of the Georgia Tech Research Institute

Areas of research expertise: Computer vision software; simulation; sensors

Focus of current FoodPAC research projects:

Overline Imaging: To help detect foreign material in food processing lines, most producers currently use plastic items with colors that stand out from the product stream in hopes that an employee will find the items. The goal of our research is to build a color vision system that will automatically detect and then remove these colored objects from the food stream.

Core Temperature Monitoring: Consumers and institutional markets continue to demand more and more product that can be heated and served quickly and safely. The challenge for processors is to ensure that fully cooked products are indeed fully cooked without being overcooked to a point where yield and quality are impacted. The goal of our project is to use non-contact imaging to monitor the core temperature of the fully cooked products.

What I find most rewarding about working on FoodPAC-funded projects: FoodPAC projects provide researchers the unique opportunity to demonstrate how technologies will perform in a production environment. While other research opportunities show that a concept is feasible in a laboratory, they still leave a number of unanswered questions that make it too expensive to risk commercialization.

Education: M.S., Electrical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology; B.S., Physics, Davidson College

One thing people may not know about me: I play the guitar.

My day would not be complete without: Getting the chance to spend time with my children.

My motto: Anything is possible.

FoodPAC Seeks Nominations for New Members

FoodPAC’s Executive Committee is actively seeking nominations for new members to serve on either the program’s Steering Committee or one of its three Technical Committees. Each year FoodPAC partners the food industry with Georgia’s institutions of higher education and state agencies to foster research, technology development, and technical assistance in the food processing sector.

On average more than $1 million is allocated by the state annually to support approximately 15 projects related to Environmental, Food Safety and Health, and Process and Product Improvement research priorities in the food processing and allied industries. FoodPAC’s committees provide a wide range of coordination, dissemination, and oversight functions to ensure the success of the program each year.

The Steering Committee:

• oversees the project selection process and makes the final recommendation for project funding to the Governor
• elects a private sector representative to serve as chair
• coordinates the establishment of program priorities and the dissemination of program results

The Technical Committees:
(Environmental, Food Safety and Health, Process and Product Improvement)

• establish specific industry priorities for their respective technical areas
• review submitted project proposals for technical merit and response to identified need and rank each in order
• review progress and completion of projects

The Steering Committee typically meets twice a year, while the Technical Committees each meet once a year. If you are interested in joining FoodPAC and serving on any of the Committees or know of someone who is, please contact any of the individuals listed in the masthead above, or the Steering Committee members in the FoodPAC Directory.

FoodPAC Calendar

November 7, 2005
Call for Proposals for FY 2007 Research Program is issued

December 9, 2005
Fiscal Year 2005-2006 Report to Industry is distributed

February 6, 2006
Proposals for the FY 2007 Research Program are due

February 17, 2006
Technical Committees receive proposals for review

February 27-March 10, 2006
In-depth reviews are conducted by Technical Committees on all continuation and high-ranking new proposals

March 13, 2006
Technical Committee recommendations are submitted to the Steering Committee

March 13-31, 2006
The Steering Committee meets to establish the final research agenda and funding plan

April 3, 2006
All proposal teams are notified of the Steering Committee’s final plan

June 30, 2006
FY 2006 projects are completed

July 3, 2006
Funding for FY 2007 research projects begins

September 5, 2006
FY 2006 research projects final written reports are due

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