Pet food processing
Pets now play increasingly important role in modern life, resulting in a desire to improve the quality of the food fed to such pets. That’s why traditional rendered meat is being replaced with chilled fresh meat, and dry pet food processors are focusing on boosting fresh meat content.
Fresh meat for pet food
The solution to cool soft meat by-products from slaughtering or fish by-products is the Alfa Laval Contherm cylindrical scraped-surface heat exchanger, which is specially designed for cooling viscous, sticky and chunky products. In Contherm cooling systems, products are chilled without air contact. Its construction is well thought through – Contherm requires little floor space, cuts down on labour and only needs minimum maintenance. The unit is also easy to clean, even though it handles demanding products.
Fresh concentrated meat
The Alfa Laval concentrated meat system, based on the well-known Alfa Laval edible fish and meat systems, to makes it possible to reduce the moisture content, normally by 50%.
Alfa Laval core technologies make it possible to maintain full control of the levels of fat and moisture in all the fresh meat products from slaughtering or fish processing. Alfa Laval concentrated meat technology makes it possible to balance fat levels and reduce moisture, thus ensuring that dry pet food producers can integrate more fresh meat in their products. Consistent moisture and fat output, regardless of fluctuating input composition, also makes it easier to balance the different dry pet food diets.
The system can be implemented by the processor or the pet food processor and can be adapted to virtually any type of fresh meat used in pet food.
The concentrated meat system
The system includes three main process systems
- Raw material grinding and emulsification (max 3 mm particle size) of the fresh or frozen raw material.
- The Alfa Laval Centriflow system, with 3-phase decanter centrifuge technology and fat purification to provide meat solids, stick water and fat.
- The AlfaVap evaporation system concentrates the stick water into a highly functional meat concentrate, which can be used separately as an abider or flavour enhancer in the pellet production stage.
This makes it possible to achieve a meat concentrate with approximately half the moisture, using the well-proven technology already employed in edible meat protein processing.
