Patent EP-4176725-A1 (EP)
Inventor: TYSZKIEWICZ STANISLAW
IPC: A23B4/052
Filed: 2022-11-04
Abstract: The method and device for air smoking of food being the subject of the invention have an interesting history from the second half of the 20th century among Polish food technologists dealing with the chemistry and physics of colloids, quoted in Reiner Hamm's book "Koloidchemie des Fleisches" published in 1972 in the Paul Parey publishing house in Berlin and Hamburg by D.J. Tilgner and S. Tyszkiewicz together with their students and co-authors. In 1962, Prof. D.J.Tilgner's doctoral student Kazimierz Miler defended his doctoral thesis at the Gdansk University of Technology on the subject of "Possibilities of producing smoke free of 3,4 benzopyrene and 1,2,3,4 disubenzanthracene", and Dr. S. Tyszkiewicz published the results of his research on the osmotic nature of the transport of chemicals dissolved or colloidally dispersed in the water of post-mortem muscle juice in the book "Study of the physical properties of meat" published in WNT in Warsaw in 1969. Docent Dr. K. Miler, working at the Institutes of the Meat Industry (IPM) and the Meat and Fat Industry (IPMiT), together with numerous co-authors, patented 6 methods of producing smoke preparations (SP) and partially implemented them in Poland and other countries, and after his death in 1994, his student Dr. and later associate professor and professor Adam Borys patented two more SP in 2001 and 2013, but without any chance of their personal implementation. In the 1980s, due to real or fictionalised information about the intention to evict from the cities meat factories emitting smoke from wood-fired smokehouses into the atmosphere and churning wood sawdust, research on smoking with closed smoke circulation in smoke chambers without chimneys was launched at IPMiT. A team of researchers led by Prof. S. Tyszkiewicz patented the method and equipment for smoking with closed smoke circulation and successfully put it into practice. However, larger urban meat factories equipped with mass-produced smokehouses installed smoke afterburners in their chimneys and converted smoke emissions into carbon dioxide emissions, and IPMiT stopped paying to protect the patents it held for closed-smoke smoking. Smaller area plants did not have to change anything, as smoke emissions were not banned and no standardisation of the presence of harmful smoke components was introduced. The situation changed dramatically after the introduction of a standard for polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in the European Union, and standards also had to be implemented by EU candidate countries. A standard for carcinogenic PAHs in food was introduced in the European Union in 2006, limiting benzo(a)pyrene and the sum of four (PAHs)4 : benzo(a)pyrene BAP, benzo(a)anthracene BAA, benzo(b)fluoranthene BBF and chrysene CH. In 2011, the requirements were tightened with effect from 2014. The contamination limits are set in µg/kg, which means extremely trace concentrations that are unrealistic under the usual environmental conditions of the earth's atmosphere. This means that the limits set should be regarded as conventional, and dimensionless similarity numbers (BLPs), for example the ratio of the concentration of a single PAH to the sum of four PAHs determined in the same sample by the same method, should be taken seriously. The PAHs in the trace concentrations of the colloid dispersive substance, determined in µg/kg, when examined by chromatography over a longer period of time after smoking, do not represent the actual degree of contamination, because when the samples are ground and weighed, substances from not only the surface, but also from substances contained in the inner layers, evaporate from them. The smoking method according to the invention removes the two most toxic smoke components from the smokehouse and converts them into carbon dioxide saturating into condensed and separately disposed water. Characterised by a much higher volatility, dibenzo(ah)anthracene (DAHA) is particularly highly toxic, having formerly been considered five times more harmful than BAP. Present in products immediately after the smoking process and evaporating into the atmosphere, it should be determined especially in products that are eaten quickly after smoking or grilling on charcoal grills without a post-smoking process (favourable open hearth with access to air, flambrying). The method of air smoking according to the invention ensures the removal of contamination from the smoke and prevents the contamination from escaping outside the smoking chamber and the emission of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.