SupplySide West In Brief

Cargill: Self-GRAS certification for Cargill's Regenasure glucosamine product gives the ingredient unique opportunities into the functional food arena, according to Technical Services Manager Brent Rogers. The glucosamine form, which launched in 2004, is available in supplement products, but "when Cargill did a self-GRAS of the product we opened up innovation with glucosamine for the first time in food products," Rogers said. Under DSHEA, self-GRAS allows a firm to gather safety data in order to certify an ingredient as generally recognized as safe. Additionally, "being the only domestically produced product has differentiated our product greatly, since most all of it comes from Asia, and ours is uniquely made from a patent-protected process which is a fermentation versus the traditional waste shells of shellfish; therefore this product is suitable for vegetarians and people with shellfish allergies," Rogers added. The firm included many varieties of beverages in addition to yogurt in its GRAS assessment and plans to explore applications in new food categories in the future. The firm debuted its first commercial Regenasure-containing beverage, Joint Juice, at the show; other show launches include a pomegranate dairy smoothie containing CoroWise plant sterols, a tropical strawberry yogurt smoothie with Oliggo-Fiber inulin and a strawberry chewy granola bar with Xtend sucromalt...