Where food is smoked smoke is created. Smoke can be conventionally generated smoke from burnt biomass (combustion smoke, friction smoke or steam smoke) or it can be purified smoke based on primary smoke products (CleanSmoke). The type of smoke makes a significant difference in terms of emission control regulations.

Emission control is defined as follows: The IED-Directive 2010/75/EU[1] regulates pollutant emissions from industrial plants, which also includes food processing plants. A high level of protection for human health and the environment is achieved by reducing harmful industrial emissions through the application of best available techniques (BAT). To define BAT and the environmental performance associated with BAT at EU level, the European Commission organises an exchange of information with experts from Member States, industry and environmental organisations. This work is coordinated by the European IPPC Bureau at the Joint Research Centre (JRC) in Seville. The outcome of this process is BAT reference documents (BREFs), which contain BAT conclusions that are adopted by the Commission as implementing decisions.

It is precisely this process of defining what constitutes ‘Best Available Technology’ that the food industry has recently gone through. The BAT decision for the food, drink and dairy industry[2] was adopted in December 2019. In the conclusions, the use of purified smoke (smoke from purified primary smoke condensates for smoking in smokehouses) was recognised as BAT. This means that CleanSmoke is – apart from better health protection – the best thing that can happen to a smoked food and its producer in terms of environmental law.