Products & Solutions

Sheer enjoyment

When you indulge in a delicious steak or fillet, you can do this without having to worry – because of the high standards in the food industry. PERACLEAN® 22 CW is a high-grade peracetic acid that effectively disinfects raw meat and poultry and increases its shelf life. Thanks to its naturally occurring components it does not leave behind harmful chemical residues that are hazardous to consumers’ health.

Raw meats have for a long time been treated with chlorine in the U.S. to prevent the growth of bacteria and microorganisms. However, as chlorine has become a suspected carcinogen over the past five years, many meat producers have started switching to peracetic acid (PAA). PAA is a fast-acting antimicrobial that eventually decomposes to water, oxygen and acetic acid (vinegar). This gives the chemical a great advantage over chlorine, as PAA-based applications are safe for consumers.

PERACLEAN® 22 CW from Evonik is a peracetic acid based antimicrobial agent for use with poultry, as well as whole and cut meat. The 22 percent solution is ideally suited for environmentally safe disinfection of poultry, beef, and pork and effective combating of pathogens such as such as salmonella and campylobacter. The product reliably kills off microorganisms by penetrating through their cell membranes, reaching all the way into the interior of the cell, rendering the microorganisms harmless.

Entire carcasses or individual cuts of meat can be treated with PERACLEAN® 22 CW in many different ways, from spraying, through washing, to rinsing. Meats disinfected in this way have longer shelf lives in supermarkets. PERACLEAN® 22 CW is also suitable for use in the treatment of kosher meat.

Stabilizers and pure raw materials enhance quality

In the US, PERACLEAN® 22 CW has won itself a reputation as a high-performance product. To consistently maintain a high quality, Evonik relies on two essential factors. First, extreme care is taken to use only high-grade and especially pure raw materials in production. Second, Evonik has acquired outstanding expertise through significantly improving the stability of PERACLEAN® 22 CW. Peracetic acid has the disadvantage of having a tendency to decompose, and to enable it to be stored as long as possible, it must be mixed with effective stabilizers that preserve the solution. Evonik has developed stabilizers that can do this to an extraordinary degree.

Evonik’s stabilizers contribute decisively to allowing PERACLEAN® 22 CW to be stored for up to 12 months without losing its efficacy. Users can be assured that the Evonik product retains its quality even after several months of storage. Users of other peracetic acid products have so far had to resort to using larger quantities after a long storage period to achieve the same disinfectant action. With PERACLEAN® 22 CW, this is no longer necessary. The resulting lower consumption gives buyers the added advantage of reducing the area set aside for storage of peracetic acid in their production facilities. Yet another positive aspect of PERACLEAN® 22 CW is that the waste water generated in meat-processing units is more easily reprocessed than when conventional chemicals are used.

At lower concentrations, PERACLEAN® can also be used in other areas of food processing. Producers of stone fruits such as peaches and plums in particular benefit from the chemical’s disinfectant properties. It is used during the ripening process and again later when the fruit is handpicked. This reliably prevents infestation by microorganisms, and the product does not perish as easily. Because peracetic acid decomposes into its natural constituents after use, the use of PERACLEAN® is expressly permitted in the US, even for organic products.

Obvious advantages

The classic field of application for peracetic acid remains the meat and poultry industries. This is increasingly becoming the case also in other large meat-producing countries like Mexico and Brazil. The use of PERACLEAN® 22 CW has a range of advantages for meat-processing companies. It is an environmentally- and consumer-friendly, high-grade product that sustainably removes pathogens from raw meat. Thanks to its particularly high stability, it can be stored for longer and used more sparingly—to the advantage of users and the benefit of consumers.