Industrial Performance Food safety
Lubricants are critical to the food chain
Is anything more universal in the human experience than our relationship with food? Certainly everyone eats, but the role of food in our lives goes far beyond mere sustenance. We share an emotional bond with food which explains why people spend so much time and energy on the entire process surrounding the eating experience. Food processors and marketers take advantage of people’s love affair with food by creating products that connect with customers emotionally.
Food preferences may stem from a childhood memory or perhaps from a good meal with the right people. We may react positively to a friend’s recommendation or find our inspiration in an advertising jingle. Although there may be ten pizza parlours nearby, we always go back to the same one because their pizza is the best. We can’t even imagine how the other pizza places stay in business.
Sometimes we fall into love at first sight and other tastes develop slowly over time. In love and in food, we are creatures of habit. However, one bad experience could be enough to end our affair forever. And we won’t be afraid to share the story with everyone we know. Dogs may return to the chocolate that made them sick, but humans have a long memory of their experience with food and follow the adage “once burned, twice shy”.
Even if you agree with the above points, it must seem to be a curious lead-in to an article on food grade lubricants. However, one of the most important features in any food product is trust. We may forgive a worm in an apple or even a bout of food poisoning, but it is unlikely we will eat a food that we don’t trust. Companies that manufacture untrustworthy foods will not stay in business for long.
Most people have complete faith that someone is keeping watch of the food supply. We assume that any product that appears on the grocery shelf is safe to eat. In fact, a combination of government, business and societal oversight makes it extremely unlikely that an unsafe food will reach the consumer. Still, few people actually know how this system works or realise that it covers ancillary items such as lubricants.
So, how are food processing lubricants regulated? Actually there are several ways that lubricants may be approved for use in a food plant. The first question is whether the lubricant is food or non-food.
Edible lubricants
Many ‘food grade’ lubricants are based on fully edible products. Unsurprisingly, oils derived from animal sources and food crops
such as vegetable oil, tallow and lard are edible and can also act as lubricants. Perhaps less people realise that petroleum derived products such as mineral oil and microcrystalline wax, are also part of our everyday food supply. Even talc, iron oxide, titanium dioxide, ferrocyanides and other inorganic chemicals are considered perfectly safe food additives.
Food safety standards have been around since the earliest days of civilisation and are written into the texts of major world religions. Today there are many government and non- government protocols that define what food is. Perhaps the most universally accepted is The Codex General Standard for Food Additives (GFSA Codex Standard 192-1995). This is a joint document developed by the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) and the World Health Organisation (WHO). The Codex Alimentarius Commission (i) was created in 1963 ‘to develop food standards, guidelines, and related texts such as codes of practice under the Joint FAO/WHO Food Standards Programme.’ As the name implies, the Standard was adopted in 1995 and is periodically reviewed and revised under the supervision of the Codex Alimentarius Commission. The current (2011) revision is 271 pages long and provides extensive guidance on the acceptable uses of edible products that are determined to be safe by the Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives (JECFA). The Codex Alimentarius website referenced at the end contains much more detail for interested readers.
Although the Codex does not specifically address machinery lubrication, most lubricant manufacturers feel perfectly safe using the Codex standards to select lubricant ingredients that can be used in food plants because there is no concern about food safety. The logic is that any lubricant contacting the food will cause no harm as long as the lubricant itself is edible. Cooking sprays are the most visible use of edible products as lubricants. An example is a vegetable oil sprayed on an industrial baking rack so that biscuits don’t stick to the metal. Clearly there is intentional and unavoidable contact between the oil and the biscuits, so the oil must be edible.
On the other hand, heavy industry learned long ago that edible oils have significant deficiencies that limit their usefulness as a lubricant base oil. Edible oils tend to solidify at low temper- atures, smoke when heated and polymerize when kept hot. Industrial machinery demands higher performance and the lubricants are therefore based on synthetic chemistries that can withstand the severe conditions. These high performance synthetics are not edible oils, but are non-toxic and harmless in cases of incidental food contact.
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LUBE MAGAZINE No.110 AUGUST 2012
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