News
Release
For Release 2:00 p.m., Wednesday, March 3, 2004
Safe Foods Corporation
Contact Chris Coleman or Mark Hill: 501-758-8500
Safe Foods Corporation Receiving FDA Approval for Cecure™
Poultry Industry Gaining New Weapon to Fight Bacteria
ROGERS, Arkansas. (March 3, 2004) — A breakthrough in food safety is winning the approval of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and will soon be deployed in the war against food-borne illnesses. Safe Foods Corporation, the Arkansas-based company that owns the U. S. and international comprehensive patents to Cecure™, today announced the notice of approval by the FDA for Cecure’s use on raw poultry. The food safety company made the announcement at its research and development laboratories in Rogers.
What’s remarkable about Cecure™ is that it is based on cetylpyridinium chloride (CPC), the active ingredient used in mouth rinses and throat lozenges, which have been safely consumed in multiple over-the-counter oral hygiene products for more than 50 years. CPC has been proven to be dramatically effective in killing most food-borne pathogens that cause serious and sometimes life-threatening illnesses, including Listeria, E. coli, Salmonella, and Campylobacter.
Cecure™, considered to be a dramatic breakthrough in food safety, was discovered by research teams led by Danny Lattin, Ph.D., at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) in Little Rock and Michael F. Slavik, Ph.D., at the University of Arkansas Poultry Science Center in Fayetteville. Safe Foods Corporation, which acquired the worldwide patent rights to all food-related applications of CPC through an exclusive licensing agreement with the University of Arkansas, conducted the research necessary to win the approval of both the FDA and the USDA.
Curtis Coleman, President and Chief Executive Officer of Safe Foods, said that almost all of the research required to win FDA and USDA approval was conducted in the company’s R&D facilities in Rogers. “We have one of the finest food safety R&D teams in the world,” he said, “led by Dr. Kelly Beers, Joe Rheingans, Gary Nolen, and Dr. Amy Waldroup.” Beers, Rheingans, Nolen, and Waldroup are all residents of northwest Arkansas.
Coleman explained that the next step is for the FDA to publish the new regulation in the Federal Register and, following a standard 30-day public comment period, commercial use of Cecure™ can begin. Safe Foods will then begin making Cecure available to chicken and turkey processors as the next generation food safety technology in a pre-chill application, he said. The process approved by the FDA involves spraying Cecure™ on the poultry as it passes down the production line. The overspray is captured and recycled in the process leaving no environmental impact.
“We’ve proven through years of research and testing that Cecure delivers an unparalleled combination of efficacy, affordability, ease of use, and environmental safety,” Coleman said. “With this approval from the FDA, we can now offer this next generation technology to the industry which can use Cecure to raise food safety to a new level.”
A study by the Department of Food Science & Technology at Virginia Tech, published recently in the Journal of Applied Poultry Research, compared the efficacy of a number of antimicrobials against Campylobacter jejuni on chicken skin and concluded that CPC “was the most effective antimicrobial agent in this study.” According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), Campylobacter is the most common bacterial cause of diarrheal illness in the United States, estimated to affect more than 2 million people annually.
Dr. Amy Waldroup, Senior Advisor, Food Safety for Safe Foods and former Professor of Poultry Science at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, said, “This is really a huge jump for food safety, especially for the poultry industry that has really been searching for an antimicrobial that can help them meet and exceed all of their government regulations and produce a much safer product for the consumer.”
Dr. Timothy J. O’Brien, Director of the Biomedical Biotechnology Center at UAMS, said, “Our challenge as scientists is to move useful ideas from the lab into the marketplace for better human health and well being. The use of the fundamental chemistry of the Cecure antimicrobial was discovered and developed by faculty researchers at UAMS, and Safe Foods Corporation is now a classic example of technology transfer.”
The need for new food safety technology is apparent from news reports of food-borne illnesses. The CDC estimates there are 76 million food-borne infections, 325,000 hospitalizations, and 5,200 deaths in the United States each year. Food recalls have dominated news headlines over the past several years.
According to Dr. James Marsden, Regents Distinguished Professor of Meat Science at Kansas State University, “CPC (Cecure) is a thousand times more effective than anything else we’ve tested.”
“This announcement is significant because it is the market introduction of a revolutionary new technology that has the potential to significantly and positively impact food safety issues around the world,” Coleman said. “The food processing industry’s response to the news about Cecure has been extraordinary. The industry can now take advantage of the potential Cecure has as a food safety intervention. At Safe Foods, we are focused on eliminating food-borne illness throughout the world, and this is a major step in that direction.”
Safe Foods is aggressively seeking regulatory approval for the use of Cecure in other countries around the world as well as for other areas of the food processing industry. Other applications under development include beef, pork, seafood, and fruit and vegetable applications.
About Safe Foods
Safe Foods Corporation is a North Little Rock, Arkansas-based food safety company that was founded in January 1999. The company specializes in the development and commercialization of food safety technologies, which it will make available to producers, processors and consumers of dairy, meat, poultry, eggs, fish, fruits and vegetables. Safe Foods has microbiology, analytical chemistry, engineering, and pilot processing facilities in Rogers, Arkansas.
The first of multiple patents for Cecure was granted in 1994 to the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS), and in June 1999, Safe Foods acquired the exclusive worldwide rights to the patents from UAMS. Safe Foods also provides the proprietary ultraviolet sterilization technology, FreshLight™, for a variety of food safety applications.
For more information, please visit the company’s web sites at www.SafeFoods.net or www.Cecure.com.
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