The Chilled Food Association (CFA) has responded to the needs of teachers, careers advisors and the wider industry by enhancing and expanding its Chilled Education website. To mark the second anniversary of Chilled Education the site www.chillededucation.org has a fresh new look, and access to a host of new resources. It also includes exclusive interviews with industry professionals who share their own career path stories, aimed at inspiring and encouraging the next generation of chilled food specialists. And a fun new resource, Micro Trumps, offers a creative new take on a popular game, using microbes as the theme! Chilled Education was developed […]

A three year research programme to sustainably extend the shelf life of chilled foods has attracted the highest possible score after evaluation by the government’s Advanced Food Manufacturing LINK Programme Management Committee (PMC). The £750k Sustainable Shelf Life Extension (SUSSLE) project was partly funded by CFA and brought together academics and industry to investigate the effects of heat processing on sporeforming pathogens, specifically non-proteolytic C. botulinum. The aim being to define a milder heat process than is currently recommended, ensuring a safe shelf life for prepared chilled foods whilst reducing energy usage. Outputs from SUSSLE will remain confidential until April […]

The chilled prepared food sector has delivered 21.4% energy reduction against an agreed target of 13.2% during the life of the Climate Change Agreement thus helping some other sectors under the FDF umbrella to meet their targets. Given the sector is a large consumer of energy this represents significant savings and a major contribution to the Governnment and the food industry climate change mitigation programme. Although the sector’s growth has some part to play we believe that chilled food manufacturers have at significant cost to their business made real and tangible changes in the way energy is consumed which has resulted in […]