Coming Clean
While brines and marinades delivered through injectors allow for flavor and functionality, another converging trend – the clean label movement -- is impacting ingredients that are injected into a product or how those ingredients are perceived by consumers.
According to Brooks, interest in clean (or cleaner) labels is impacting the use of injection. “Most of the changes in delivery systems are the result of decisions to accommodate different ingredients used as substitutions for current ones. While phosphates are extremely functional in an enhanced meat system and are considered to be naturally derived, they are not necessarily considered natural on a label,” he says. “So there are some looking to replace phosphates with ingredients like gums, which require special production management to get them to be productive.”
Going forward, clean label seems more of a reality than a trend. Four in 10 consumers say they look for an expanded assortment of products labeled as hormone free/no added hormones, antibiotic free, grass fed and raised in the USA/local products, according to the 2017 Power of Meat report. The market research firm Euromonitor projects that global sales of clean label food and beverage items will soar to $180 billion by 2020.
Accordingly, injection technology and ingredients to be injected reflect interest in clean label meat and poultry products. At JBT Wolf-Tec, Kingston, N.Y., director of sales and marketing Chris Mason says the development of injection technology and equipment reflects marketplace trends, including interest in clean labels for meat and poultry products. “Through meat-in-meat injection, we can eliminate phosphates or at least reduce them using a protein’s natural water-binding characteristics to retain water in a product. That is something we’ve seen a lot of interest in over the last 12 months or so,” he says.
Beyond clean label, other product trends in the meat and poultry sector also impact injection advancements and applications. One case in point is the recent surge in the popularity of jerky products. Many of those protein-rich snacks are processed using injection methods.
“We’ve been involved in high solid brine injectors that are used in things like jerky products, which are hot right now. You can’t use a standard injector for those,” says Mason. Wolf-Tec’s injector designed for high solid and high viscous brines is in greater demand among meat snack processors, he adds.
