In July, several French infants were infected with Salmonella and promptly warned the European Union that infant formula from Ireland was suspected to be contaminated. Salmonella is a common source of food contamination, often transmitted to humans through contaminated food, which may cause acute gastroenteritis, usually manifested as vomit and diarrhea, fever, and so on.
Ireland responded by confirming that Ireland's infant formula milk powder is produced strictly in accordance with the highest food quality and safety standards and fully complies with the standards of the European Union and China's food safety sector.
Although this incident is false news, what is the legendary production of high-quality standards? How is the milk powder your baby drinks produced? How to choose infant milk powder for babies?
Microbial control is essential
Normally, infant formula milk powder is not contaminated by pathogenic bacteria such as Salmonella. Because microbial control runs through every link of the whole production process.
Firstly, production enterprises will establish control systems to prevent microbial contamination, and regularly (weekly) according to monitoring guidelines to ensure that pathogenic bacteria such as Salmonella and Enterobacter Sakazakii are effectively controlled (total bacterial count < 30 CFU/dish) in the cleaner production areas.
Personnel entering the clean operation area will also carry out a regular or irregular surface microbiological examination. The whole production workshop is pressurized to purify the air supply, and will not be polluted by external air. At the same time, production equipment and tools will be regularly cleaned or disinfected, and before production, it is necessary to carry out systematic cleaning. The disinfection and drying operations to ensure that dairy products are not contaminated by pathogens in the production process.
Secondly, all raw materials and accessories of infant formula milk powder need to undergo strict inspection procedures before production, implement batch inspection to ensure that they meet the relevant national food safety standards and do not contain pathogenic bacteria for production.
Thirdly, the production process of infant formula milk powder needs to undergo strict process validation procedures to ensure that the quality of the products produced has sustained stability.
Finally, after the product is produced, it needs to be qualified before it can leave the milk company, to ensure that the moisture content of milk powder products is about 3% and the water activity (Aw) is about 0.2. Under these conditions, microorganisms can not reproduce and grow. Therefore, qualified products will not be contaminated by pathogens without damage to packaging.
If infant milk powder is contaminated by pathogenic bacteria, it must have been contaminated in the production process. For example, the raw materials used contain pathogenic bacteria and have not been completely sterilized, or the production equipment and production environment are not thoroughly disinfected before production, resulting in pollution, and so on. Each of the three processes has its own advantages and disadvantages.
How to make the infant formula milk powder?
Simply speaking, it is a formula milk powder made by mixing milk powder or raw milk with other auxiliary materials. Milk powder is commonly referred to as milk powder. Raw milk refers to raw fresh milk, that is, raw milk that has not been processed from cows. The excipients include various milk nutrients.
Compared with ordinary milk powder, infant formula milk powder is especially for children to eat, containing many kinds of nutritional facts, so in the production process, the control of nutrients and microorganisms is more stringent.
There are three main production processes: dry process, wet process and dry-wet composite process.
(1) Dry process
It refers to the infant formula milk powder obtained by weighing, sterilizing, mixing and packaging all the ingredients of raw and auxiliary materials in the dry state. Its technological process is raw and auxiliary materials preparation feeding sterilization ingredients (premix) feeding mixing packaging. The raw materials and accessories used in the dry process are powdery, including milk powder, desalted whey powder, whey protein powder, fat powder, vitamin powder, mineral powder, etc.
Its sterilization method is ultraviolet or ozone sterilization. It can only sterilize the surface of powdery materials, but not the interior of materials. There may be some incomplete sterilization. Once the raw materials contain pathogenic bacteria, it can not be sterilized in the production process. In addition, there may be an uneven mixing of nutrients in milk powder produced by dry process. This process requires high sanitary conditions for raw materials, production equipment, and production environments.
(2) Wet process
It refers to the mixing and processing of various raw materials in a liquid state, and finally get infant formula milk powder. Its technological process is raw milk, pure milk (to make raw cow milk reach a higher purity), then sterilization, cold storage, standardized ingredients, homogenization, sterilization, concentration, spray drying, fluidized bed two drying, packaging.
The wet process usually uses raw milk (raw milk) as milk source for production. For enterprises without their own pastures, milk powder is sometimes used as raw material to dissolve and produce. The advantages of this process are that the wet process can be formed at one time, all kinds of nutrients can be thoroughly dispersed, and the product quality is uniform.
Because all raw materials are mixed after dissolution, the material in the liquid state heating sterilization more thoroughly, not easy to be contaminated by microorganisms, easier to ensure product hygiene.
(3) Dry-wet process
On the basis of wet process, a small part of the heat-sensitive component is mixed with milk powder made by the wet process to mix and canned milk powder to get infant formula milk powder. The technological process is raw milk, milk, sterilization, refrigeration, standardized ingredients, homogenization, sterilization, concentration, spray drying and fluidized bed drying for the two times. Semi-finished products dry mixing packaging.
Most of the raw materials and excipients of the dry-wet process are sterilized in a liquid state, which can minimize the risk of microbial contamination. A small part of the thermosensitive ingredients are dry-mixed without thermal sterilization treatment, and can also retain the activity of nutrients to the greatest extent.
The recipes are similar, just take what you need.
How do parents choose milk powder for their babies? Any substitute for milk powder? After looking at the production process of formula milk powder, you will find that formula milk powder is made of various powders, including raw milk as milk source, and formula milk powder which dissolves milk powder as ingredients.
Generally speaking, the formula of raw milk is better than that of milk powder. Because when milk powder is used as an ingredient, it is equivalent to having been processed from milk to milk powder before. Now it is used as ingredient of infant milk powder and processed again. Each processing contains some heating treatment, which has a certain impact on the nutritional components of milk.
Learn to look at the order in the formula ingredient list.
The higher the reranking, the greater the amount of added milk. Of course, you may find that many brands of ingredients have milk powder? In fact, if there is skim milk powder in the ingredient list, and the position is not very advanced, then the purpose of adding skim milk powder may not be used as a milk source, it may be used as standardization of formula. So the quality of milk powder can not be generalized.
There are so many brands of milk powder, and there are all kinds of brands and series. What's the difference in the end? In fact, on the basis of meeting the national food safety standards, different brands are almost the same in general, but the nutrients added to the formula are differentiated.
For example, 0-6 months of infants, you can choose milk powder recipes nutrients more comprehensive, add some optional nutrients (such as DHA, ARA, lactoferrin, nucleotides, lutein, etc.). For children over the age of one, selectable nutrients are less important, because, at this time, children have begun to eat supplementary foods and some foods other than formula milk powder. For some infants whose stomach is not very good and easy to constipate, you can choose some formula with dietary fiber, probiotics and so on.
Finally, I would like to say that although Ireland infant formula milk powder is not a problem this time, there are still many foreign infant formula bacterial contamination incidents from last year to this year, which also reminds us that we need not over chase foreign milk powder. Scientific judgment and rational consumption are the most important. Also, you may consider some dry milk powder substitute with proper calories in milk powder.