Forum Food - Ingredients & Functional Foods

Enzymes

All grades of Activa Transglutaminase:
- Activa EB
- Activa GS
- Activa MP
- Activa WM
- Activa YG

ACTIVA, An innovative enzyme for the meat, fish & dairy industries

Activa is Ajinomoto’s brand of Transglutaminase, which is an enzyme that occurs widely in nature. It has been used successfully by the European and Japanese meat, fish, and dairy industries for a number of years.

Ajinomoto Co. Inc is the first company to successfully produce it in commercial scale via fermentation.

Activa catalyses the formation of stable, fine protein networks by creating covalent bonds between two amino acids: glutamine (G) and lysine (L).

These so-called G-L bonds are very stable. Once formed, these bonds are heat resistant.

Applications
In the fish, sea food, and meat industries, transglutaminase is used to bind pieces of fish or meat together for:
- Portion control
- Add value to meat off-cuts

Some of the benefits of Activa are:
- No need to use heating / freezing for binding
- Possible to slice the recombined meat in the raw state
- Easy to handle, no effect on flavour.

Activa is also used to improve the structure of fish, cooked meats, hams and sausages:
- Standardizing texture
- Improving sliceability
- Improvement of breaking strength
- Adding more juiciness
- Reduction of other ingredients (e.g. phosphates)

In dairy applications, Activa is used for texture improvement in cheeses and yogurts.

Activa – Labelling information

Transglutaminase is a food enzyme and under UK food labelling regulations transglutaminase is classed as processing aids. Therefore it is not necessary to label Activa on the product ingredient list.

However, from 25th November 2004, The Food Labelling (Amendment) (No. 2) (England) Regulations 2004 introduced a list of 12 allergens or intolerances (Annex to Directive 2003/89/EC and Schedules AA1 to the Regulations). The new rules require foods containing ingredients on the list in Schedule AA1 or their derivatives to make a clear reference to the Schedule AA1 name whenever they are used in pre-packed foods.

Some grades of Activa are affected by these regulations and need to be labelled as ‘contains x’ on the packaging, owing to the carriers used in the different enzyme preparations.

Stability
The G-L (Glutamine-Lysine) bonds are very stable. Once formed, these bonds are heat resistant.

In addition, Activa Transglutaminase is also active at a wide range of pH, temperatures, salt contents, etc.

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