BREAD BUSINESS: SCIENTIST URGES ORGANIC APPROACH TO THE ARMENIAN STAPLE
- Bread, the centerpiece of the Armenian diet, is becoming less healthy, according to at least one scientist who is concerned that the staple is becoming too influenced by chemicals. Biochemist Alexander Selimyan says almost all local bakeries use fermentation “catalysts” to speed the baking process. The catalyst, a complex of chemical compounds accelerates the dough fermentation and makes it ready for baking within 3-4 hours (instead of 10 hours of traditional process).
Selimyan, who holds PhD in chemistry has urged health officials to create a commission to study the chemical content of the catalyst. “My efforts yielded yet a little but at least some effect- the catalysts are being imported now from Europe, while before it was coming from Turkey. The response I got from officials concerning the bread vitamin was that Europe is also using the chemical catalysts for making bread.”
Selimyan agrees that the express technology is applied worldwide, still the customers in other countries have a chance to read the appropriate labels on bread and choose between bread made with the catalysts technology or natural (organic) bread which is expensive by 5-6 times.
Another concern of the scientist is the production of rye bread in Armenia. Selimyan says only few producers out of hundreds have been making bread from rye flour. Others make it from wheat flour, and then dye it with beta-carotene or burnt sugar to give the bread the brown pigment peculiar to rye bread.
“The technology of rye bread production is very complicated and only skilled technologists can get the bread from rye flour,” Selimyan said.
During Soviet times there were 4-5 sorts of bread in Yerevan produced by nine bread-baking plants. Like other food sectors bread production was controlled by the state which introduced the “Gost” –state standards for all kind of products. Bread was routinely inspected by sanitary commissions.
Now, some 500 bakeries operate throughout Yerevan, each producing from 100 kilos to 3 tons of bread daily. Bread production is a profitable business and bakeries sometimes operate in basement and garages, unlicensed. Bakery employees do not pass medical examination, something that was strictly controlled during Soviet times.
“The main problem is that bread business in Armenia is not controlled by the state,” says Abgar Yeghoyan, the head of the Armenian Union for the protection of consumers’ rights non governmental organization. “The existing law on food safety is not being applied to the bread business,” he says.
“Still Armenia has adopted state standards for bread, which says that all Armenian bakery production enterprises should have the technological instruction and the packaged bread should include the invoice indicating the sort of the bread, its weight, the energetic value. . . Still only few producers do it and most of them have no idea of any normative.”
Yeghoyan says Armenia has signed a World Health Organization list of standards for food security and limits the use of certain additives into food production.
Officials from the Armenian office of the World Health Organization could not say whether prohibited modifiers are used in bread production in Armenia.
Last March the inspection responsible for food safety was abolished at the State Hygienic and Epidemiological Inspection of the Armenian Ministry of Health. It was replaced by another inspection at the Ministry of Agriculture- the inspection of the food security and veterinary.
(Officials from the State Hygienic and Epidemiological Inspection refused to provide information regarding the bread quality and refused to say whether there were bread inspections at their department.)
Arthur Varzhapetyan, the head of the newly created department at the Ministry of Agriculture says he understands the concerns of experts and consumers on bread quality; still he assures that the quality of bread corresponds to the adopted standards.
“This department was created with a very certain mission- to check the food quality and for the first time in Armenia (after independence) our inspection is conducting now a large-scale examination through the bakeries in Armenia,” says Varzhapetyan.
“We have a list of 12 prohibited additives, 2 of which are known as the bread additions, E924 and E 925. The results of physical-chemical tests we made on various kinds of bread revealed so far no such additives.”
Varzhapetyan says the inspection disclosed violations, mostly dealing with the absence of certificates on flour and yeast. Forty bakeries in provinces and 35 in Yerevan were fined 100,000 drams ($300).
However Varzhapetyan says they do not posses information about the quality of rye bread, as the tests were made only on wheat sorts of bread, but promised that during the next inspection they would make tests on rye bread.
Meanwhile in one bakery Selimyan applies his invention, “Hatsatan” natural catalyst. In the bakery which belongs to Yeritsyan and Sons company there are three kinds of bread produced under “Bio Bread” brand, made by the Selimyan’s formula. The Bio Bread has a special label, which tells of the fermentation technology and ingredients as well as bearing the signature of the scientist.
Selimyan says his product achieves dough acceleration, but “is a natural serum”. He says there is nothing mysterious in the natural catalyst he created, which in fact he worked it out on the basis of traditional formula for sour-diary serum, the only one that was used during Soviet times.
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- 0 Tre was the 4th month in the old Armenian calendar (November 8 to December 8). It is connected with Tyr's name - the pagan Armenian god of culture and literature.
- 1841 The commoners of Constantinople demonstrate against the Patriarch and the gentry.
- 1901 Death of the Mkhitarist Congregation member Ghevond Alishan (armenologist) in Venice. He was born in 1820.
- 1906 The Tsar emancipates the serfs of European Russia.
- 1957 Death of Martiros of Garni. He was a fighter and member of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation party.
- 1962 The artificial silk - thread mill of Kirovakan (Vanadzor) starts production.
- 1999 The Council of Europe's Committee of Ministers agrees to accept Armenia as a full member of the Council of Europe.
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