Abstract
My work placement in Northern Ireland took place on the Loughry Campus, which provides education and training programs for students who aspire to pursue a career in the agro-food industry and also for postgraduate persons. In recent years, Loughry has developed a wide range of courses in Food Technology, Supply Management, Marketing and Packaging. The activities are not only educational as the food technologists and technicians help companies to solve technical problems, develop new products or technologies and improve quality systems. The Food Incubation Centre and its eight food processing units is available for entrepreneurs wishing to establish food manufacturing operations or for existing food businesses wishing to develop, test and commercialize new concepts. The Packaging Centre, one of the most recent developments, provides a resource for evaluating packaging materials and distribution packaging systems. I have worked in the microbiology laboratory, which has three main activities. I will list out the details about my experience with the placement in this document.
Extract
[...] Then we proceeded to the assembly and conditioning of the products. A mixer, a Pasteuriser and different cookers have been used, among other pieces of equipment. On completion ot this workshop, we: - had a practical understanding of Sous Vide cooking, of sauce manufacture and of the technology involved in production of meat components and sandwich meats - could critically evaluate the technology of post packaging pasteurisation and assess shelf life extension - could consider the role of different packaging systems 4-Taste panels The taste panels were held in the taste room of the FTC. [...]
[...] The operator places the pots on the rotary table, indexes the rotary table clockwise to the foil dispense assembly where a foil is placed automatically and the operator then indexes the table to the heater assembly where the aluminium foil lid is heat sealed automatically. The pots were labelled and stored in the chill at 2 to 4°C before being sold at the retail outlet. This slows down the biological and biochemical reactions resulting from the metabolic activity of the starter culture and possibly any microbial contaminants. [...]
[...] Production information is also collected, such as the weight of items selected at random, yields, batch numbers? 3-Workshops These one-day training courses are aimed at company's staff members who wanted to improve their skills in food manufacture. The workshops I attended were also aimed at Loughry staff members, as they were presented by a person who was about to retire. Through the preparation of traditional recipes, we learnt how to work with several pieces of equipment and their assets to the process. [...]
[...] The composition of the media is indicated below in Table III. media composition concentration or quantity MRS salt agar Rogosa salt agar MRS pH5,4 agar MRS Maltose agar MRS NNLP agar ST agar BLOG agar MRS agar Salt Rogosa agar Salt MRS agar Acetic acid 6N All components of MRS agar but glucose replaced by maltose MRS agar NNLP solution Tryptone Sucrose Yeast extract K2HPO4 bromocresol purple Blood agar base No.7 Oxgall Gentamycin 40 g/L 40g/L Until pH5.4 is reached 10mL/200mL of agar 10 g/L 10 g/L 5 g/L 2 g/L 6 mL/L 0,2mg/mL 30µg/mL Table III: Composition of the media B-API and BBL crystal kits, catalase test These kits are a good alternative to individual and time-consuming phenotypic tests. [...]
[...] The successful use of ascorbic acid as an oxygen scavenger has been reported. (Miller, Nguyen, Rooney and Kailasapathy (2003)). Incorporation of Streptococcus thermophilus strains that have a high oxygen utilisation ability is another way to lower the level of dissolved oxygen in the yoghurt. Oxygen enters the family products once opened whereas the individual products, drunk in one go don't have that drawback and could be a better and more affordable choice for the conditioning of the bio yoghurts. IV-Other activities My work at the microbiology laboratory often required waiting time, giving me the opportunity to attend other activities at the Food Technology Centre (FTC). [...]
