- Email: [email protected]
High Fructose Corn Syrup
maket in Sweden where a pharmaceutical company has bought about 3,000 tonnes a year to manufacture an intravenous solution called Intralipid. The Canadian market in Asia has been developed on reliability of supply of a clean, consistent-quality product. Future prospects for exporting to Asia look good because Pacific Rim and European buyers believe Canadian soybeans are of superior quality. Transportation is the biggest challenge faced by Canadian exporters. Freight accounts for about 21% of the delivered cost of the beans to Asia and transit time from Toronto can run from 25 to 45 days. The soybeans are shipped in containers loaded at country elevators and trucked to Toronto or Welland and then by rail to Saint John or Halifax for ocean transport. Some shippers are also using Vancouver or United States west coast ports. The potential for market growth is substantial. Canada currently has only 9% of the large Pacific Rim market. The United States has 72%, China has 10% and the other 9% is supplied by Brazil, Argentina, South Africa and Thailand. With the increasing demand for soybeans for human consumption, there is a growing need for new varieties that meet the criteria of that specialty market. Canadian growers are concentrating their efforts on developing varieties that are free of the bitter, beany flavor of some soybeans, and on the small beans required for the natto and bean sprout markets.
High Fructose Corn Syrup When Coca-Cola Company and Pepsico Inc., the two giants of the soft drink industry, announced late in 1984 that they would permit the unrestricted use of High Fructose Corn Syrup in all their products, an historical milestone was created. In fact, at the time of the annoucement Allan Creditor, Vice President of the investment firm Drexel Burnham Lambert, said that he expected U.S. soft drink producers to be "zero-pound users of sugar by 1986" .1 Until the advent of "diet" soft drinks in the 1960s, sugar from sugar cane or sugar beets was the only sweetener used by the soft drink industry and ranked as the single most important factor in the economics of soft drink production. Let's look at how sugar came to this position. While some form of sugar making was known in India as early as 3000 B.C., fruits and honey were western man's only significant source of sweetness until sugar cane (imported by overland route from Asia) began to be grown in Arabic Spain and Southern France in the 8th century. Until the 18th century, sugar was a scarce luxury, inventoried together with jewels in the estates of wealthy families. This was due primarily to the fact that sugar cane cultivation in Europe was not particularly successful. When Columbus carried sugar cane to the New World on his second voyage in 1493, however, a new era of sugar
production began. The islands of the West Indies and the equatorial zones of the Americas proved themselves to be superb growing grounds for cane sugar - slaves were imported into the West Indies to work in the cane fields and fortunes were made by the sugar barons of the era. Subsequently, other areas of the world (including the Hawaiian Islands of the Pacific, Australia, South Africa, and Brazil) proved to be suitable areas for the cultivation of the sugar cane. And thus, sugar became one of the great cash commodity crops of the world. The pOSSibility that sugar could be isolated from sugar beets became known in the mid-18th century and attempts were soon made to establish sugar beet production factories in Central Europe. This was aided by Napoleon, who encouraged sugar beet cultivation at the time of the blockade of Europe by the British Fleet during the Napoleonic wars. While the sugar beet industry in Europe temporarily collapsed after Napoleon's downfall, by the late 19th century sugar beets had become the principal sweetener in the European diet and is even more so today. The state of today's sugar market is aptly summed u~ in a recent article in The Economist, which said, "The world sugar market makes a nonsense of economic theories. It is a tangled mess of trade restrictions, price subsidies and quotas. The result is that the world market price is almost meaningless, and producer profits (and losses)
Semmons-Taylor Inc. 321 LESMILL ROAD, NORTH YORK, ONTARIO, CANADA M3B 2V1 Tel: (416) 449-9530 Montreal Office: 1600 50TH AVENUE, LACHINE, QUEBEC H8T 2V5 Telephone (514) 636-0089 Telex.: 06-966624 Cable: SETACO
SETA Creative Food Ideas in Responsible Hands SUPPLIERS OF QUALITY FOOD INGREDIENTS WITH TECHNICAL SUPPORT FOR OVER 25 YEARS AGAR- DEXTROSE- NATURAL GUMS- H.V. P.- VERV- SPRAY DRIED SPECIALTIESDEHYDRATED FRUITS - GELATINE - WHIPPING PROTEINS - STARCHESRIBOTIDE - CORN SYRUP SOLIDS - EMPLEX· EMULSIFIERS - STABILlZERSCUSTOM BLENDING - TECHNICAL SERVICES Circle Reply Card No. 89
xviii / Affaires de l'Institut
J. Inst. Can. Sel. Teehnol. Aliment. Vo!. 18. No. 3, 1985
depend on more who a country's friends are than how efficient it is." It is interesting to note that this article made no mention whatever of High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS). Nor is HFCS mentioned in another recent editorial page article} in the Barbados Advocate, which quotes Lord Balfour of Burleigh (1916): "There must be continuing security in the market for a period long enough to encourage the investor to layout his money, but that must be done in such a way as not to put a premium on idleness and apathy." Furthermore, the Globe and Mail speculated a few months ago whether the sugar beet industry in Western Canada is about to come to an end as the result of the depressed prices for sugar on the world market. (The spot price for sugar has recently fallen as low as 3.5 cents U.5. per pound, a sharp contrast to the all-time high of 65 cents per pound in 1974. The stratospheric prices in 1974 are now attributed to the U.S.S.R., who, having suffered a serious crop failure, quietly began to buy up sugar on the world market 4 . While admitted by some and ignored by others, there is no question that HFCS is having a significant impact on the natural sweetener industry. What then is HFCS and how is it creating this effect? To put HFCS in its proper perspective, it is useful to compare its chemical structure to that of sugar. Sugar, or sucrose, is part of a family of carbohydrate compounds which vary in molecuar size and sweetness. Lactose, the sugar of milk, has the same molecular structure (and caloric value) of sucrose but is not particularly sweet. (There have been instances in the food industry where skim milk powder has been used - such as in spreadable cheese - and the lactose has crystalized in the jar, leading to innumerable complaints from people who insisted that they had eaten broken glass when, in fact, they had chewed on the relatively tasteless lactose crystals.) (Table 1) Sugar is made up of two molecules of smaller sugars, glucose and fructose, which are joined together naturally by a chemical bond. This bond can be broken by natural enzymes or by the action of acids such as those found in soft drinks. The breakdown of the sucrose molecule into glucose and fructose is known as "inversion". (An old chemist's word from the 19th century, "inversion" is used to describe what happens when you look through sugar solution with polarized light: the stronger the sugar solution, the more it will rotate the polarized light in one direction, but if the sugar starts to Call. Insf. Food Sci. Technol. J. Vol. 18. No. 3, 1985
Table 1. Scale of Relative Sweetness Relative Sweetness (Sucrose = 100) Sugar Lactose Raffinose Galactose Rhamnose Maltose Xylose Corn Syrup Glucose Sucrose Invert Sugar Fructose Sodium Cyclamate Saccharin Aspartame
16 22 32 32 32 40 60 74 100 130 173
STANGE CANADA, INC. ANNOUCEMENT
3,000 45,000 180,000
Source: Hawk's Physiological Chemistry, 14th Edition, McGraw Hill, 1965. p. 62, and Bernarde,Dr. Melvin A. The Chemicals We Eat, American Heritage Press, New York, 1971. p.66.
invert, the rotation starts to go backwards or "invert".) When fully inverted, sugar consists of a mixture of equal parts of glucose and fructose. "Medium invert" is used to describe sugar where approximately half the sugar has been inverted. Invert sugar solutions have certain advantages from a soft drink manufacturing point of view. Solutions of pure sugar, or liquid sucrose, are difficult to push to concentrations of over 65 percent or 65° Brix because it will start to crystallize due to the size of the sugar molecule. (Brix is the name of a man who developed a system for measuring concentrations of sucrose; 65° Brix essentially means 65 percent of pure sucrose in solution). In the case of fully or partially inverted sugar, however, the molecules of glucose and fructose have a much higher solubility than that of the sugar molecule itself, allowing an "apparent" level of about 75° Brix to be achieved. The significance of these higher molecular concentrations relates to their role in preventing bacterial growth. It is extremely difficult for organisms to grow in concentrated solutions of sugar (which is why jam does not rot), whereas solutions of liquid sucrose (because of their lower concentration) are much more susceptible, particularly if any surface dilution of the solution occurs due to condensation. Although glucose is less sweet than sugar or sucrose, and fructose is more sweet than sugar or sucrose (with a spread of approximately 30 percent each way), when glucose and fructose are present in equal parts they provide the same sweetness level as the original sugar molecule which human beings seem to find the optimum form of sweetener. The objective in HFCS
Mr. Jack P. Meyers, President STANGE CANADA INC. is pleased to announce the appointment by the Board of Directors of Ben J. Gregory as Vice President, Sales. Mr. Gregory joined Stange Canada in 1967. He has held a number of sales positions since 1967 and at the time of his announcement was Director of sales. Mr. Gregory is located in the company head office in Mississauga.
production, therefore, was to produce a liquid that is chemically equivalent to totally inverted sugar. And the key lay in the chemistry of the starches. Everyone in the Western world is aware of corn starch, potato starch, arrowroot starch etc. Starchy plants also grow in abundance in other parts of the world such as Cassava.
MOVING? Don't forget to notify us of your change of address. Institute Affairs / xix
GRIFFITH LABORATORIES LTO. ANNOUNCEMENT
Dr. David H. Lees
Mr. Jim A. Schollar, President & C.E.O., The Griffith Laboratories, Limited, is pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. David H. Lees as Executive Vice President, Chief Operating Officer of the Company. Dr. Lees joined Griffith in 1979 as Vice President Technical, becoming Group Vice President in 1982 with responsibility for all technical, sales and marketing functions of the Company. The Griffith Laboratories, Limited is a leading supplier of food ingredients, technology, processing equipment, sterilization and analytical services to the food and related industries in Canada and abroad.
Most starches consist of glucose molecules joined together in numerous chains which can branch and connect and vary in size in an almost infinite number of combinations. In fact, it is these variations that give the starches their different characteristics. Almost all, however, are made of glucose. There are a few obscure starches in the xx / Affaires de l'Institut
world, such as inulin from dahlia roots, which are made up solely of fructose, but these are not of any substantial commercial significance. The cheapest and most plentiful starch produced in North America is corn starch. Corn, which is indegenous to this continent, is grown with enormous efficiency and in enormous volume. When a solution of corn starch is broken down, either by enzymes or by the use of acids, into its constituent glucose molecules, the result is corn syrup, more commonly known as pancake syrup. Because it is made up entirely of glucose, however, corn syrup is simply not as sweet as invert sugar or liquid sucrose and as such has never been acceptable to any significant extent as a sweetener in the production of soft drinks. If, on the other hand, half the glucose in corn syrup could be changed into fructose, the equivalent of liquid invert sugar (assuming that the right degree of purity was achieved) would be created. HFCS is exactly that - a solution of glucose prepared from corn starch where approximately half the glucose has been turned into fructose. Clearly, this represents an enormous technological breakthrough. The success of HFCS technology is based on the fact that glucose and fructose are very similar molecules. They have the same molecular weight, but due to internal differences in their spatial molecular structure, they have different sweetness levels, just as milk sugar and sugar differ. This makes them "isomers" - molecules that have the same molecular weight but differ in their properties. Generations of scientists have known about glucose isomerase, an enzyme capable of transforming glucose into fructose, but the basic problem has always been how to do it economically, mainly because enzymes are both difficult and expensive to isolate and prepare. To take a relatively cheap quantity of glucose syrup and add to it some very expensive glucose isomerase to convert the glucose into fructose means that the enzyme is either lost or an attempt must be made to recover it, both of which are prohibitively expensive. During the late 1960s and early 1970s, however, the industrial production of immobilized enzymes and the industrial application of the computer made this conversion process economically viable. The immobilization of enzymes means that the non-active end of an enzyme can be chemically attached to a plastic bead so that the active end sticks out like a microscopic seaweed. A large quantity of these beads are then
placed in a cylinder similar to a water softener. A glucose solution made from corn starch is pumped in one end and the mixture of glucose and fructose comes out the other, while the enzymes stay in the cylinder attached to the beads. An added benefit is that a HFCS processing plant also yields oil, chaff and other products. Corn starch can be sold as such or converted into glucose syrup, which can in turn be sold or converted into HFCS. Initially, HFCS plants had and still have a natural conversion yield of 42 percent fructose. While this material was used in partial amounts in the soft drink industry it was still not quite good enough for replacement of invert sugar. Further advances in technology permitted the concentration of certain portions of the 42 percent stream, which was then added back to bring the fructose content to 55 percent and it is this HFCS-55 (as distinct from the original HFCS-42) that is now being accepted by all the major soft drink industries. Needless to say, there are rigid standards as to purity, a problem in the early days of HFCS production, which have now been solved since the HFCS producers combined together to establish absolute standards of purity. Given that corn is grown abundantly, effiCiently and cheaply and is processed in large and efficient HFCS production plants, the lower production costs for HFCS will inevitably have an effect upon the cost of sugar, and consequently, market share. Add to that rising demand - the V.S. per capita consumption of sweeteners grew from 124.2 pounds in 1975 to 132.9 pounds in 1983 and is predicted to rise to 148 pounds by 1992 - and sugar's share of the market is likely to dip to 42 percent by 1992 (compared to 72 percent in 1975) while the HFCS share is predicted to reach 31 percent. s There are certain applications of sugar in the baking and confectionery industry where it is impossible to see how it could be replaced by a liquid sweetener such as HFCS. In the overall hodgepodge of support prices, dual pricing etc., that characterize so much of the international sugar industry, it is difficult to forecast how the economic impacts will manifest themselves in the next few years. Countries like Australia that grow cane in enormous tracts and harvest it mechanically would certainly be at an advantage in a free market but in economies which depend upon hand labour, however, cheap, and support prices, it is difficult to see how the inexorable economic punch cannot tell in the end. There are currently three HFCS J. InSI. Can. Sci. Technol. Aliment. Vo!. 18. No. 3. 1985
plants in Canada, all in Ontario, with ready access to corn. Two of them produce HFCS-55, which could be used by the soft drink industry, although little or no HFCS-55 is used in Canada in soft drinks. This is mainly due to the lack of a support price for sugar in Canada. Refiners buy raw sugar on the world market at spot prices and since there is a surplus of sugar in the world this is about the cheapest sugar available. While sugar refined in Canada cannot be exported to the United States, HFCS produced in Canada can, where it sells in competition with government subsidized sugar, a product necessarily more expensive than Canadian sugar. As of April 1984, Canadian exports of HFCS into the U.S. were estimated to be 10,000 tons per months. 6 As a result, the HFCS manufacturers are exporting their product and getting a better price than they could in Canada, while the soft drink manufacturers have access to the lowest cost refined sugar in the world. Mr. Drum is Vice-President and Manager
of the Technical Division of Coca-Cola Ltd. A chartered chemist, he is the author of numerous scientific papers and serves on various national and international scientific bodies, including acting as industry advisor to food-related Canadian government delegations to the United Nations. References 1. Daniels, Lee A. "Coke, Pepsi to Use More Corn Syrup". New York Times, November 7, 1984 2. The Economist, March 2, 1985 3. Hinds, Rudolph. "Sweet and Sour Sugar". Barbados Advocate (News), February 9, 1985 4. Fowler, Elizabeth M. "Future/Options". New York Times, November 26, 1984 5. "King Sugar: Still No. 1, But Losing Ground". Food Engineering, November 1984 6. F.O. Licht Sugar Information Service, April 24, 1984 James A. Drum, M.Sc., M.A. Reprinted from "Perspectives" Canadian Soft Drink Association
Cardinal Laboratories
Kitchens
Consultants to the Food Industry • • • • • • • • • • • •
Microbiological and Chemical Testing Research and Product Development Quality Control Food, Pharmaceutical and Water Analysis Evaluation of Packaging Systems Nutritional Analysis Sensory Evaluation/Focus Group Testing Food Styling Recipe Testing and Development Video Presentations Educational Handbooks Seminars
For further information, contact: Cardinal Biologicals Limited 43 Railside Road Don Mills, Ontario M3A 3L9 (416) 447-9126
The Federal Meat Inspection System
Introduction Federal meat inspection in Canada encompasses slaughter, processing and storage and is performed under the authority of the Meat Inspection Act and Regulations administered by Meat Hygiene Division of Agriculture Canada. An inspector may be either a veterinarian (V.S.), or a primary products inspector (P.!.) and the two groups work in close collaboration. While the two groups have separate roles to play in ante and postmortem inspection (see below), in other areas of inspection they act interchangeably, i.e., monitoring all aspects of maintenance and operation of an establishment including new plant design, state of repair of the establishment, level of sanitation, conduct of plant employees, use of only approved chemicals for cleaning and disinfecting equipment, use of only approved equipment and
ONTARIO CENTRE FOR FARM MACHINERY AND FOOD PROCESSING TECHNOLOGY
Assisting in the Technological Advancement of the Food Processing Industry Whatever the size of your processing operation, we can help in analyzing your problems and needs at a reasonable cost. • New equipment and process design. • Modification and adaptation of existing processes. • Food preservation and packaging. • New food products. • Process and quality control. • Equipment and facilities layout. ONTARIO CENTRE FOR FARM MACHINERY AND FOOD PROCESSING TECHNOLOGY 870 Richmond SI. Chatham, Ontario N7M 5J5 (519) 354-6883
Circle Reply Card No. 90 Can. Inst. Food Sel. Teehnol. J. Vo!. 18. No. 3, 1985
Circle Reply Card No. 91
Institute Affairs / xxi
High Fructose Corn Syrup When Coca-Cola Company and Pepsico Inc., the two giants of the soft drink industry, announced late in 1984 that they would permit the unrestricted use of High Fructose Corn Syrup in all their products, an historical milestone was created. In fact, at the time of the annoucement Allan Creditor, Vice President of the investment firm Drexel Burnham Lambert, said that he expected U.S. soft drink producers to be "zero-pound users of sugar by 1986" .1 Until the advent of "diet" soft drinks in the 1960s, sugar from sugar cane or sugar beets was the only sweetener used by the soft drink industry and ranked as the single most important factor in the economics of soft drink production. Let's look at how sugar came to this position. While some form of sugar making was known in India as early as 3000 B.C., fruits and honey were western man's only significant source of sweetness until sugar cane (imported by overland route from Asia) began to be grown in Arabic Spain and Southern France in the 8th century. Until the 18th century, sugar was a scarce luxury, inventoried together with jewels in the estates of wealthy families. This was due primarily to the fact that sugar cane cultivation in Europe was not particularly successful. When Columbus carried sugar cane to the New World on his second voyage in 1493, however, a new era of sugar
production began. The islands of the West Indies and the equatorial zones of the Americas proved themselves to be superb growing grounds for cane sugar - slaves were imported into the West Indies to work in the cane fields and fortunes were made by the sugar barons of the era. Subsequently, other areas of the world (including the Hawaiian Islands of the Pacific, Australia, South Africa, and Brazil) proved to be suitable areas for the cultivation of the sugar cane. And thus, sugar became one of the great cash commodity crops of the world. The pOSSibility that sugar could be isolated from sugar beets became known in the mid-18th century and attempts were soon made to establish sugar beet production factories in Central Europe. This was aided by Napoleon, who encouraged sugar beet cultivation at the time of the blockade of Europe by the British Fleet during the Napoleonic wars. While the sugar beet industry in Europe temporarily collapsed after Napoleon's downfall, by the late 19th century sugar beets had become the principal sweetener in the European diet and is even more so today. The state of today's sugar market is aptly summed u~ in a recent article in The Economist, which said, "The world sugar market makes a nonsense of economic theories. It is a tangled mess of trade restrictions, price subsidies and quotas. The result is that the world market price is almost meaningless, and producer profits (and losses)
Semmons-Taylor Inc. 321 LESMILL ROAD, NORTH YORK, ONTARIO, CANADA M3B 2V1 Tel: (416) 449-9530 Montreal Office: 1600 50TH AVENUE, LACHINE, QUEBEC H8T 2V5 Telephone (514) 636-0089 Telex.: 06-966624 Cable: SETACO
SETA Creative Food Ideas in Responsible Hands SUPPLIERS OF QUALITY FOOD INGREDIENTS WITH TECHNICAL SUPPORT FOR OVER 25 YEARS AGAR- DEXTROSE- NATURAL GUMS- H.V. P.- VERV- SPRAY DRIED SPECIALTIESDEHYDRATED FRUITS - GELATINE - WHIPPING PROTEINS - STARCHESRIBOTIDE - CORN SYRUP SOLIDS - EMPLEX· EMULSIFIERS - STABILlZERSCUSTOM BLENDING - TECHNICAL SERVICES Circle Reply Card No. 89
xviii / Affaires de l'Institut
J. Inst. Can. Sel. Teehnol. Aliment. Vo!. 18. No. 3, 1985
depend on more who a country's friends are than how efficient it is." It is interesting to note that this article made no mention whatever of High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS). Nor is HFCS mentioned in another recent editorial page article} in the Barbados Advocate, which quotes Lord Balfour of Burleigh (1916): "There must be continuing security in the market for a period long enough to encourage the investor to layout his money, but that must be done in such a way as not to put a premium on idleness and apathy." Furthermore, the Globe and Mail speculated a few months ago whether the sugar beet industry in Western Canada is about to come to an end as the result of the depressed prices for sugar on the world market. (The spot price for sugar has recently fallen as low as 3.5 cents U.5. per pound, a sharp contrast to the all-time high of 65 cents per pound in 1974. The stratospheric prices in 1974 are now attributed to the U.S.S.R., who, having suffered a serious crop failure, quietly began to buy up sugar on the world market 4 . While admitted by some and ignored by others, there is no question that HFCS is having a significant impact on the natural sweetener industry. What then is HFCS and how is it creating this effect? To put HFCS in its proper perspective, it is useful to compare its chemical structure to that of sugar. Sugar, or sucrose, is part of a family of carbohydrate compounds which vary in molecuar size and sweetness. Lactose, the sugar of milk, has the same molecular structure (and caloric value) of sucrose but is not particularly sweet. (There have been instances in the food industry where skim milk powder has been used - such as in spreadable cheese - and the lactose has crystalized in the jar, leading to innumerable complaints from people who insisted that they had eaten broken glass when, in fact, they had chewed on the relatively tasteless lactose crystals.) (Table 1) Sugar is made up of two molecules of smaller sugars, glucose and fructose, which are joined together naturally by a chemical bond. This bond can be broken by natural enzymes or by the action of acids such as those found in soft drinks. The breakdown of the sucrose molecule into glucose and fructose is known as "inversion". (An old chemist's word from the 19th century, "inversion" is used to describe what happens when you look through sugar solution with polarized light: the stronger the sugar solution, the more it will rotate the polarized light in one direction, but if the sugar starts to Call. Insf. Food Sci. Technol. J. Vol. 18. No. 3, 1985
Table 1. Scale of Relative Sweetness Relative Sweetness (Sucrose = 100) Sugar Lactose Raffinose Galactose Rhamnose Maltose Xylose Corn Syrup Glucose Sucrose Invert Sugar Fructose Sodium Cyclamate Saccharin Aspartame
16 22 32 32 32 40 60 74 100 130 173
STANGE CANADA, INC. ANNOUCEMENT
3,000 45,000 180,000
Source: Hawk's Physiological Chemistry, 14th Edition, McGraw Hill, 1965. p. 62, and Bernarde,Dr. Melvin A. The Chemicals We Eat, American Heritage Press, New York, 1971. p.66.
invert, the rotation starts to go backwards or "invert".) When fully inverted, sugar consists of a mixture of equal parts of glucose and fructose. "Medium invert" is used to describe sugar where approximately half the sugar has been inverted. Invert sugar solutions have certain advantages from a soft drink manufacturing point of view. Solutions of pure sugar, or liquid sucrose, are difficult to push to concentrations of over 65 percent or 65° Brix because it will start to crystallize due to the size of the sugar molecule. (Brix is the name of a man who developed a system for measuring concentrations of sucrose; 65° Brix essentially means 65 percent of pure sucrose in solution). In the case of fully or partially inverted sugar, however, the molecules of glucose and fructose have a much higher solubility than that of the sugar molecule itself, allowing an "apparent" level of about 75° Brix to be achieved. The significance of these higher molecular concentrations relates to their role in preventing bacterial growth. It is extremely difficult for organisms to grow in concentrated solutions of sugar (which is why jam does not rot), whereas solutions of liquid sucrose (because of their lower concentration) are much more susceptible, particularly if any surface dilution of the solution occurs due to condensation. Although glucose is less sweet than sugar or sucrose, and fructose is more sweet than sugar or sucrose (with a spread of approximately 30 percent each way), when glucose and fructose are present in equal parts they provide the same sweetness level as the original sugar molecule which human beings seem to find the optimum form of sweetener. The objective in HFCS
Mr. Jack P. Meyers, President STANGE CANADA INC. is pleased to announce the appointment by the Board of Directors of Ben J. Gregory as Vice President, Sales. Mr. Gregory joined Stange Canada in 1967. He has held a number of sales positions since 1967 and at the time of his announcement was Director of sales. Mr. Gregory is located in the company head office in Mississauga.
production, therefore, was to produce a liquid that is chemically equivalent to totally inverted sugar. And the key lay in the chemistry of the starches. Everyone in the Western world is aware of corn starch, potato starch, arrowroot starch etc. Starchy plants also grow in abundance in other parts of the world such as Cassava.
MOVING? Don't forget to notify us of your change of address. Institute Affairs / xix
GRIFFITH LABORATORIES LTO. ANNOUNCEMENT
Dr. David H. Lees
Mr. Jim A. Schollar, President & C.E.O., The Griffith Laboratories, Limited, is pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. David H. Lees as Executive Vice President, Chief Operating Officer of the Company. Dr. Lees joined Griffith in 1979 as Vice President Technical, becoming Group Vice President in 1982 with responsibility for all technical, sales and marketing functions of the Company. The Griffith Laboratories, Limited is a leading supplier of food ingredients, technology, processing equipment, sterilization and analytical services to the food and related industries in Canada and abroad.
Most starches consist of glucose molecules joined together in numerous chains which can branch and connect and vary in size in an almost infinite number of combinations. In fact, it is these variations that give the starches their different characteristics. Almost all, however, are made of glucose. There are a few obscure starches in the xx / Affaires de l'Institut
world, such as inulin from dahlia roots, which are made up solely of fructose, but these are not of any substantial commercial significance. The cheapest and most plentiful starch produced in North America is corn starch. Corn, which is indegenous to this continent, is grown with enormous efficiency and in enormous volume. When a solution of corn starch is broken down, either by enzymes or by the use of acids, into its constituent glucose molecules, the result is corn syrup, more commonly known as pancake syrup. Because it is made up entirely of glucose, however, corn syrup is simply not as sweet as invert sugar or liquid sucrose and as such has never been acceptable to any significant extent as a sweetener in the production of soft drinks. If, on the other hand, half the glucose in corn syrup could be changed into fructose, the equivalent of liquid invert sugar (assuming that the right degree of purity was achieved) would be created. HFCS is exactly that - a solution of glucose prepared from corn starch where approximately half the glucose has been turned into fructose. Clearly, this represents an enormous technological breakthrough. The success of HFCS technology is based on the fact that glucose and fructose are very similar molecules. They have the same molecular weight, but due to internal differences in their spatial molecular structure, they have different sweetness levels, just as milk sugar and sugar differ. This makes them "isomers" - molecules that have the same molecular weight but differ in their properties. Generations of scientists have known about glucose isomerase, an enzyme capable of transforming glucose into fructose, but the basic problem has always been how to do it economically, mainly because enzymes are both difficult and expensive to isolate and prepare. To take a relatively cheap quantity of glucose syrup and add to it some very expensive glucose isomerase to convert the glucose into fructose means that the enzyme is either lost or an attempt must be made to recover it, both of which are prohibitively expensive. During the late 1960s and early 1970s, however, the industrial production of immobilized enzymes and the industrial application of the computer made this conversion process economically viable. The immobilization of enzymes means that the non-active end of an enzyme can be chemically attached to a plastic bead so that the active end sticks out like a microscopic seaweed. A large quantity of these beads are then
placed in a cylinder similar to a water softener. A glucose solution made from corn starch is pumped in one end and the mixture of glucose and fructose comes out the other, while the enzymes stay in the cylinder attached to the beads. An added benefit is that a HFCS processing plant also yields oil, chaff and other products. Corn starch can be sold as such or converted into glucose syrup, which can in turn be sold or converted into HFCS. Initially, HFCS plants had and still have a natural conversion yield of 42 percent fructose. While this material was used in partial amounts in the soft drink industry it was still not quite good enough for replacement of invert sugar. Further advances in technology permitted the concentration of certain portions of the 42 percent stream, which was then added back to bring the fructose content to 55 percent and it is this HFCS-55 (as distinct from the original HFCS-42) that is now being accepted by all the major soft drink industries. Needless to say, there are rigid standards as to purity, a problem in the early days of HFCS production, which have now been solved since the HFCS producers combined together to establish absolute standards of purity. Given that corn is grown abundantly, effiCiently and cheaply and is processed in large and efficient HFCS production plants, the lower production costs for HFCS will inevitably have an effect upon the cost of sugar, and consequently, market share. Add to that rising demand - the V.S. per capita consumption of sweeteners grew from 124.2 pounds in 1975 to 132.9 pounds in 1983 and is predicted to rise to 148 pounds by 1992 - and sugar's share of the market is likely to dip to 42 percent by 1992 (compared to 72 percent in 1975) while the HFCS share is predicted to reach 31 percent. s There are certain applications of sugar in the baking and confectionery industry where it is impossible to see how it could be replaced by a liquid sweetener such as HFCS. In the overall hodgepodge of support prices, dual pricing etc., that characterize so much of the international sugar industry, it is difficult to forecast how the economic impacts will manifest themselves in the next few years. Countries like Australia that grow cane in enormous tracts and harvest it mechanically would certainly be at an advantage in a free market but in economies which depend upon hand labour, however, cheap, and support prices, it is difficult to see how the inexorable economic punch cannot tell in the end. There are currently three HFCS J. InSI. Can. Sci. Technol. Aliment. Vo!. 18. No. 3. 1985
plants in Canada, all in Ontario, with ready access to corn. Two of them produce HFCS-55, which could be used by the soft drink industry, although little or no HFCS-55 is used in Canada in soft drinks. This is mainly due to the lack of a support price for sugar in Canada. Refiners buy raw sugar on the world market at spot prices and since there is a surplus of sugar in the world this is about the cheapest sugar available. While sugar refined in Canada cannot be exported to the United States, HFCS produced in Canada can, where it sells in competition with government subsidized sugar, a product necessarily more expensive than Canadian sugar. As of April 1984, Canadian exports of HFCS into the U.S. were estimated to be 10,000 tons per months. 6 As a result, the HFCS manufacturers are exporting their product and getting a better price than they could in Canada, while the soft drink manufacturers have access to the lowest cost refined sugar in the world. Mr. Drum is Vice-President and Manager
of the Technical Division of Coca-Cola Ltd. A chartered chemist, he is the author of numerous scientific papers and serves on various national and international scientific bodies, including acting as industry advisor to food-related Canadian government delegations to the United Nations. References 1. Daniels, Lee A. "Coke, Pepsi to Use More Corn Syrup". New York Times, November 7, 1984 2. The Economist, March 2, 1985 3. Hinds, Rudolph. "Sweet and Sour Sugar". Barbados Advocate (News), February 9, 1985 4. Fowler, Elizabeth M. "Future/Options". New York Times, November 26, 1984 5. "King Sugar: Still No. 1, But Losing Ground". Food Engineering, November 1984 6. F.O. Licht Sugar Information Service, April 24, 1984 James A. Drum, M.Sc., M.A. Reprinted from "Perspectives" Canadian Soft Drink Association
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The Federal Meat Inspection System
Introduction Federal meat inspection in Canada encompasses slaughter, processing and storage and is performed under the authority of the Meat Inspection Act and Regulations administered by Meat Hygiene Division of Agriculture Canada. An inspector may be either a veterinarian (V.S.), or a primary products inspector (P.!.) and the two groups work in close collaboration. While the two groups have separate roles to play in ante and postmortem inspection (see below), in other areas of inspection they act interchangeably, i.e., monitoring all aspects of maintenance and operation of an establishment including new plant design, state of repair of the establishment, level of sanitation, conduct of plant employees, use of only approved chemicals for cleaning and disinfecting equipment, use of only approved equipment and
ONTARIO CENTRE FOR FARM MACHINERY AND FOOD PROCESSING TECHNOLOGY
Assisting in the Technological Advancement of the Food Processing Industry Whatever the size of your processing operation, we can help in analyzing your problems and needs at a reasonable cost. • New equipment and process design. • Modification and adaptation of existing processes. • Food preservation and packaging. • New food products. • Process and quality control. • Equipment and facilities layout. ONTARIO CENTRE FOR FARM MACHINERY AND FOOD PROCESSING TECHNOLOGY 870 Richmond SI. Chatham, Ontario N7M 5J5 (519) 354-6883
Circle Reply Card No. 90 Can. Inst. Food Sel. Teehnol. J. Vo!. 18. No. 3, 1985
Circle Reply Card No. 91
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