Eggtech Ltd. receives OARDC support via the Center for Food Safety and Agrosecurity.  Ozone technology is one of several primary projects as noted in the project abstract below.

Center for Food Safety and Agrosecurity, Professor Ken Lee Center Director

The CFSA advances innovative discoveries to market. The defense of our nation’s food supply is a high priority, and units collaborating in this ABIG Center were finalists in the Department of Homeland Security’s food defense center national competition. Creative ideas have led to important discoveries within OARDC that could help make food safe and secure. This center focuses on select ideas that have the greatest promise for commercial impact within the two year Center timeframe.

The scientific merits of these ideas are well proved. Our nation’s leading food microbiologist, with a specialization in ozone technology, has a patented idea that attracts Ohio industry investment. A National Academy of Sciences member with international repute in her understanding of noroviruses seeks to develop a rapid surveillance system for food. One of our nation’s few food package engineers will finalize design of a cap that changes color when opened, a quantum advance in tamper evident design. There are many such innovations within OARDC and it is the mission of this center to bring them to practice.

This project is directly driven by business and industry needs. A new company called EggTech LLC is a partnership of four Ohio businesses that have joined for the sole purpose of advancing the ozone-egg technology contained within this proposal. The food industry is vulnerable to biological terrorism, and needs the rapid detection and tamper evident technologies advanced by this center. Our partnership with the Edison Industrial Systems Center, Center for Innovative Food Technology (hereafter, CIFT) is unique in this regard. CIFT’s mission is to support the economic development of the food processing industry in Ohio. CIFT now has more than two dozen Ohio industry members, $1.8M in federally administered annual investment and is a partner in this proposal.

Our research objective is to bring OARDC food safety technologies to commercial viability. We have built a custom designed pilot scale ozone-egg treatment machine that resides in our Food Industries Center. This project will optimize the design so full scale commercial units can be designed, built and sold in Ohio. Color change caps must be tailored to food applications for industry adoption. Rapid tests for viral contamination of foods and feeds are at their infancy, but industry needs for this technology are immediate.

ATECH will help develop the marketing plan for ozone-egg technology. We project actual use of this technology as a direct result of this center’s management. As Ohio is the second largest egg producer in the U.S., immediate implementation is likely. We estimate $675,000 in royalty income in year five, $1.8M in price premiums for EggTech, and $3M in income on sales of process machinery for this one project alone. The Egg Safety Action Plan of the US Government calls for complete eradication of Salmonella from eggs by the year 2010. A compelling societal need is met with safe food technologies.

This proposal supports the R&D Infrastructure for our nation's leading manufacturing industry, food production. This industry alone is responsible for $407.2 Billion in shipments, employed 1.5M people in 1992 and directly impacts the lives of all Americans. Using these same measures, the food industry is larger than that of chemicals, pharmaceuticals, motor vehicles, electronics, or petroleum. The economic and public health impact of advancement of the Ohio food business can be enormous.

Last modified: 06/03/07