Clean machines, safe food: The power of hygienic design
Image: GEA
Every safe beverage and bite of food is a victory against invisible microbial threats – a battle shaped by a century of hygienic process design. With more than 100 years of engineering and hygienic design know-how, GEA sets a high industry standard for processing equipment that protects food and saves lives.
While bacterial outbreaks like salmonella, E. coli and listeria grab the headlines, they represent just one safety-related risk. In 2023, nearly 50% of food recalls by the USDA and FDA, for example, were the result of undeclared allergens, with food and beverage recalls up by 8% overall compared to the previous year. With many producers under increased pressure to generate more volume and variety of foods, ensuring food safety is not getting any easier. Yet safety remains the sine qua non of the food and beverage industry. For GEA, it is the foundation for the sustainable, long-term success of its customers – and its why GEA continues to invest so heavily in best-in-class food processing machines and systems, fulfilling hygienic design requirements.
Dairy: proving ground for food safety innovation
GEA’s leadership in hygienic design and food safety can be traced back to its roots in the dairy industry. Milk was one of first foods recognized as a source of foodborne illness, and efforts to make this nutritious staple as safe and accessible as possible form the foundation for many of today’s food safety practices and standards. One of GEA’s first industrial machines was a patented hand-powered centrifuge, which revolutionized milk separation back in 1893 and helped supply milk to a growing urban population. Today, GEA’s high-tech centrifuges serve customers across sectors in more than 150 countries – and are part of a broader food portfolio that includes homogenizers, freezing & refrigeration, spray drying, mixers and blenders, all manner of food and beverage processing equipment as well as complete filling and packaging lines.
Reinhard Moß is Senior Director of Design Standards in GEA’s Separation & Flow Technologies division. For more than 30 years, his focus has been the hygienic design of centrifuges – the direct descendants of the first milk separator. “The core principle of hygienic design is keeping the inside of machines free of microbes and other contaminants, maintaining strict separation between batches and making sure machines are easy to clean,” explains Moß. “Whether in dairy, pharmaceuticals, foods or beverages, production line machines must be free of any edges, gaps or crevices that could harbor bacteria or residues.” Given the physical and biological forces at play, achieving zero residue buildup, zero leakage, and 100 percent separation in these machines is a challenge, to say the least – and it’s an area where GEA experts have been breaking new ground for decades.In the early 2000s, Moß worked closely with the USDA in Washington, D.C., to develop a centrifuge to meet U.S. dairy industry standards. Later appointed to the board of 3-A Sanitary Standards in the U.S., which sets requirements for the design, construction, and operation of food processing and packaging equipment, Moß helped author 3-A’s separator design guidelines. On the European side, Moß has chaired a working group for disc stack centrifuges at the European Hygienic Engineering and Design Group (EHEDG) since 2008.
GEA a founding member of EHEDG
Across food, beverage and pharmaceutical industries, GEA valve technology is key to helping plant operators achieve the highest level of product purity and safety, with breakthroughs in dairy once again leading the way. In 2007, GEA revolutionized the U.S. dairy market with its innovative “PMO” valve, which allowed U.S. dairy producers to operate 24/7 without having to stop production to conduct cleaning every day. The “most mixproof valve” according to the FDA’s Pasteurized Milk Ordinance (PMO) for Grade A milk, the solution set a standard that remains the most stringent worldwide for milk processing. In 2022, GEA introduced two more groundbreaking mixproof valves, giving producers of milk, food, pharmaceutical and extended shelf-life beverages a measure of product and process safety that far exceeded previous requirements. In 2024, GEA presented its dual block valve technology for spray dryers which minimizes areas where feed can pool. This solution reduces potential contamination areas by about 96%, improving cleaning-in-place (CIP) efficiency, further reducing microbiological risk during food and dairy processing.
New foods, same high standards
GEA hygienic design solutions span the industries and ages – from traditional dairy to the newest of “new foods”. At the leading edge of a global push for more sustainable food production, alternative proteins, such as those made via precision fermentation or cultivated meat technology, have the potential to drastically reduce the human impact on the climate and environment. Realizing the promise of these new proteins will require efficient, industrial-scale production processes. And it will require biotech with hygienic design at its best – because controlling microbial growth is key to ensuring not only the safety of these new foods, but their very viability.
Morten Holm Christensen is Application Manager for Biotechnology in GEA’s, Liquid & Powder Technologies division. He works with producers of alternative proteins – from start-ups to multinationals – to ensure the optimal application of GEA machines in their production processes. “In precision fermentation, you create super-optimized growth conditions so that a host microorganism can thrive, but these conditions can also promote the growth of an unwanted microorganism which would likely outperform the production strain,” explains Christensen. “So once the ‘broth’ of growth media, microorganisms, target proteins and other by-products leaves the sterile environment of a bioreactor, the subsequent processing steps need to be carefully controlled.”
GEA equipment is involved in every step along the way – from tanks for prepping the growth media, to heat sterilization units, bioreactors, recovery and purification systems, such as separators, filtration units, as well as dryers. “As with dairy, alternative production of proteins using precision fermentation depends on machines that are drainable, cleanable and devoid of slow flow areas where contaminants can build up,” says Christensen. “All GEA flow components are optimized with this in mind.”
Hygienic design principles also apply to customer processes. Here, Christensen and his colleagues make sure the right equipment is in place, traceability is maintained and cooling is sufficient, among other considerations. What sounds a bit mundane is actually business critical. “If the right hygienic design and controls are not in place, entire production batches can be lost due to contamination,” explains Christensen. Especially for start-ups, this safety risk is also an existential one given the high expense of the raw materials as well as the lost production capacity.
GEA: thought leader in food safety
In the world of food and beverage processing, ensuring food safety will continue to require constant attention and innovation. Microbes are as prevalent and opportunistic as ever, and a warming climate – along with longer supply chains – work only in their favor. At the same time, producers face stricter regulatory requirements, along with more demanding consumers. In this complex landscape, GEA’s unrelenting focus on safety also helps producers rise to today’s sustainability challenge. With more efficient processes, reduced water and energy consumption, fewer product recalls and less food waste, GEA’s hygienic equipment contributes to not only a safer, but more sustainable food supply chain.
