After Thousands of Years, a Better Way

Canadian Research Discovery Opening New Market Possibilities for Fermented Vegetables

Fermenting vegetables for long-term preservation has been around for a long time — in some Asian and African countries, it’s been used for thousands of years. Today, more and more people are looking to fermented vegetables as a tastier, more natural and healthier alternative to the usual commercial methods like pasteurization and chemical preservatives used to produce uniform products with a long, stable shelf life.

The problem with commercially produced fermented vegetables, at least until very recently, is the short shelf life — not more than a month.

While producers that limit distribution to small, regional markets can work around that, it was a real challenge for one Canadian company that had its eyes on a much bigger market. The company had started exporting fermented organic vegetables to Europe and the United States. The trouble was, long-distance transportation allowed time for secondary fermentation to take place, and the packaging had an unwelcome tendency to explode before the product could get to the consumer.

Caldwell Bio Fermentation Canada Inc, is a company which enjoys an international reputation in the food industry for its preservative-free products.  It needed help if it was going to reposition itself in order to take advantage of the growing worldwide demand for fermented vegetables.

Enter a team of three researchers with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC). Under the direction of Dr. Tony Savard, and working in close collaboration with Caldwell, the team set out to find a new process.

Their research led to the discovery of mixed lactic ferments that are capable of stabilizing products that have been subjected to lacto-fermentation. This eliminates the development of secondary fermentation and explosions, providing better preservation — up to one year — for vegetables fermented by the new process.

Two patents for the new process were issued in Canada in 2002, and patent applications have been filed in a number of other countries. Caldwell Bio Fermentation holds two exclusive marketing licenses for the fermented vegetables, and AAFC and Caldwell have concluded a number of partnership agreements (sub-licenses) with several countries including Hungary, Japan, Germany, the United States, the United Kingdom and Latvia.

At the moment, eight products based on seven vegetables are available on the natural food market, in the unpasteurized organic vegetable niche. The main products available commercially are sauerkraut, kimchi (a spicy condiment made with Chinese cabbage, daikon radishes and cucumber that is very popular in Korea) carrots, black radishes, garlic blossoms and beets.

Total annual sales of fermented vegetables are approximately $2 million for Caldwell Bio Fermentation and the three other Canadian companies that use the method (Le Petit Mas, La Choucroute TAPP and Les Jardins de Saint-Félicien). Close to 80 percent of Caldwell's production is exported, chiefly to the United States.

According to company president Gary Caldwell, "In the natural foods market, consumers are looking for ferments that are not pasteurized. That is why this year we are taking the innovative step of selling ferments on the retail market for consumers who would like to make their own fermented vegetables.” Mr. Caldwell says he expects sales of the ‘do-it-yourself’ product to reach $100,000 in the first year.

According to AAFC’s Dr. Savard, "Consumers are showing a keen interest in functional foods. Now, all vegetables that are fermented using the lacto-fermentation process are functional foods, as defined by Health Canada, and fit perfectly into this new trend. These vegetables are rich in lactic bacteria, and they do not require pasteurization or any added chemical preservatives. They truly are living vegetables!" said Dr. Savard.

While fermented vegetables are currently a niche product appreciated especially by health-conscious consumers, the new process also has distinctly practical advantages in terms of safe food preservation. The Canadians are already looking at opportunities in African and Asian countries, where refrigeration is not available to large segments of the population.

The discovery of these unique natural stabilization and lactic fermentation technologies for processed vegetables is just another example of the innovative thinking that is giving the Canadian agro-food sector a gold medal reputation on the international scene.