Product Description

This shelf-stable product comes as dried flakes, which can be hydrated into a nutrient fortified version of Cambodian rice porridge, or “Ba Baw”. NutriBaBaw contains rice, sweet potato, cricket powder and cashew butter, and is spiced with ginger, salt, chili powder and black pepper, a popular flavor combination in the traditional Cambodian Kroeung.

This product is intended as an easily prepared part of the daily diet of any Cambodian: while NutriBaBaw is targeted toward mothers, it would provide nutritional benefits to everyone, including developing children and teens. Once it is brought into the home, preparation is intentionally simple and stress-free. Similar to products like instant oatmeal, only hot water is needed to rehydrate the porridge.

It addresses the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) of “Good Health and Wellbeing”, targeting specific health needs of mothers in Cambodia, and “Sustainable Consumption and Production Patterns”, being comprised entirely of local ingredients, and using crickets as a sustainable source of protein.

 Processing

Process Overview

This process was chosen to minimize food safety hazards while developing the most nutritious and shelf stable product possible. To keep production costs low, standardized unit operations will be used.

• Production will start out with the delivery of raw materials to the production plant, with certificates of analysis required from each supplier and a plan for quality inspections upon arrival.

• For preparation:

  • The sweet potatoes will be washed in chlorine water and rinsed, before being peeled, cut into chunks and roasted.

  • The spices will be sifted to screen for contamination and then roasted with the cricket powder to reduce undesirable flavors and textures.

  • Rice will be rinsed and cooked in water in a batch cooker to form a porridge, and then all the ingredients will be added and cooked at 100°C for 3 min, the first critical control point

• All the ingredients will be added to the batch cooker and cooked at 100°C for 3 min. This step is a critical control point, exceeding the kill time/temperature profile of most notable microorganisms.

• The mixture will then be dried in a drum dryer until a 10% moisture content or below is reached. This translates to a water activity (aw) of 0.645 or below, rendering drum drying a critical control point as well. The low water activity makes the NutriBaBaw an unfavorable environment for microbial hazards such as Listeria and Salmonella, which cannot grow below an aw of 0.9 (13).

• As the final step, the dried flakes will be allowed to cool and packaged in individual pouches, vacuum sealing to prevent oxidation. The pouches will be passed through a metal detector, the last critical control point of production, eliminating the possible hazard of metal.

Hazard Analysis

The production process and ingredients used have the potential to introduce hazards to NutriBaBaw. To mitigate these risks, a policy of hazard analysis and critical control points, or HACCP, will be followed to identify and minimize the possibility of any physical, chemical, or microbial hazards in the final product.

A pathogen environmental monitoring system will be put in place to preemptively identify pathogen sources in the environment before they cause contamination. By using a combination of environmental monitoring approaches and specific pathogen testing, specific locations of organism habitation can be identified and removed.

• Potential Bacterial Hazards faced in processing include Cronobacter and Salmonella, two fairly common sources of food poisoning.

  • The first critical control point, the heat treatment step before drying, addresses both these hazards, surpassing the time-temperature kill profile of each bacterium

• Possible hazards resulting from Listeria, are mitigated by drum drying, as Listeria is not able to grow below aw 0.9.

• B.cereus and C. perfringens are two potentially hazardous outbreak causing bacteria which are spore forming, which can survive the heat treatment and desiccation, and have been shown to be found in insects’ gut and skin.

  • Tests for these will be required for cricket suppliers

  • NutriBaBaw will have clear instructions to consume within 2 hours of preparation or keep refrigerated at or below 4°C to prevent potential spore germination.

• To address physical contaminants, the spices will be screened before adding and the pouches will be passed through a metal detector after packaging.

• NutriBaBaw contains cashews, one of the 8 major allergens, which poses a chemical hazard as well. To address this,

  • Package label will clearly note cashews are contained, and all equipment will be thoroughly decontaminated following production.

  • All products made in the facility will be labelled to indicate possible cashew contamination.

Other Considerations

• Limited access to safe drinking water

  • NutriBaBaw production will take place in a region of the country such as Phnom Penh where the whole city has access to water meeting international quality standards.

  • Package will contain clear instructions to boil water for 3 minutes before adding to dry mix, to you prevent contamination during preparation.

• Ingredient and production stability

• Distribution to rural areas

• A shelf life of at least 12 months, which is important for distribution in remote areas.

• Good Manufacturing Processes (GMPs)

• Legal implications of the product (ingredient labeling)

• FDA, USDA, OSHA, EPA, etc. other regulations

• Local government regulations

• Delivery logistics

 Feasibility

Competitive Framework

Porter’s Five Forces Model was used to analyze the competitive framework for NutriBaBaw. Consumers will likely resort to the most accessible/cost-effective food option. In Cambodia, many of the consumer products that are not purely agricultural are imported. There is not much competition for instant porridge, even when including imported products in our analysis.

Our product aims to directly support the Cambodian rice industry, as well as the smaller cricket farming industry. There are many family run cricket farms in the Takeo province of Cambodia that supply crickets to street vendors and restaurants.

Production costs will be kept down by relying on local suppliers for ingredients. This product will be the first Cambodian based nutritive porridge on the market and will cement itself as a tough competitor to any new entrants who wish to market to rural Cambodians.

Production and Cost

• Since agriculture is a large portion of Cambodia’s GDP and the workforce, in addition to 92.7% of the population living in rural areas, farming is a significant part of many Cambodians’ daily lives. Encouraging sweet potato and rice production would support the production of NutriBaBaw, thus also reducing any import costs.

• Mondulkiri is a province that has great potential for sweet potato, rice growth and harvest. Through investment of approximately $70,000 of creating a plant, it would help not only with the local ingredients for NutriBaBaw, but also by creating job opportunities for women, boosting the local economy, and eventually distribute NutriBaBaw to other areas of Cambodia.

• The cost of production per serving of NutriBaBaw would be $0.35 with raw ingredients and processing contributing the most to the cost. An approximate price for NutriBaBaw would be $3.99 per package of five.

Readiness of Application

All of the ingredients incorporated are currently a part of Cambodian agriculture and diet, chosen to help boost the Cambodian economy. Because our product uses native spices and ingredients, it will be acceptable and familiar to mothers in Cambodia.

Too often, nutrition interventions in developing countries are hindered by reliance on a supporting country for funding. The nutritional aid becomes dependent on the funding country’s resources and culture, a dependence we hope to avoid.

Extension and Mass Production Possibilities

NutriBaBaw production will begin after constructing a plant in a developed area of Cambodia, unless a used manufacturing plant can be identified.

Following production, NutriBaBaw will be distributed to rural areas where malnutrition is greatest. Since sweet potato and cricket powder are both accessible and grown locally in this East Asian country, import costs will be reduced. In the future, with the success of NutriBaBaw, the company will develop new products to tackle micronutrient deficiencies in surrounding East Asian countries while the plant in Cambodia will continue to produce NutriBaBaw.

Not only does NutriBaBaw allow Cambodia to reduce micronutrient deficiencies, it will also help contribute to sustainability by promoting existing sustainable intensification, which is a process of enhancing crop yields on existing agricultural lands while minimizing environmental impact.

 Summary

Overall, in order to address the malnutrition in children and adolescent mothers in Cambodia, NutriBaBaw incorporates sustainable local ingredients such as cricket powder and sweet potato to provide sufficient vitamin A and B12. NutriBaBaw brings the Cambodian community closer to eliminating malnutrition in infants and mothers while contributing to the economy by supporting local crops and sustainable practices.