Enzaq is New Zealand's leading green lipped mussel (Perna Canaliculus) powder manufacturer. Specialists in providing high quality green lipped mussel powder to the functional health foods, health professionals and veterinary industries.
Through our years of experience and using the latest flash-dry process technology, we are able to produce the highest quality of bioactive nutrients available in the market today. Enzaq has a fundamental commitment to ensuring the most scientifically advanced nutrient rich food from the Sea, “The Cradle of Life”.
History of ENZAQ
It all began in early 1967 with Dr Orville H Miller who started the Aquaculture Story that Dick Dorst later established in Marlborough. Dr Miller was professor of Pharmaceutical Chemistry at the University of Southern California and held a lifetime interest in the study of natural foods and their effect on maintaining a healthy body.
He was particularly interested in the complex carbohydrates found in certain animals such as reptiles, sharks, and mussels. During his personal research in evaluating these natural foods and powders in the laboratory, he found that the key nutritive factors are the Mucopolysaccharides (today called glycosaminoglycans).
Dr Miller discovered that the Mucopolysaccharides play such a key role in the structural integrity and function of body tissues and organs, they help modulate the water spaces and eventually decline with age. Dr Miller believed that these carbohydrates might someday be called “essential” in the same way that nutrition science views essential vitamins and amino acids.
Between 1968 and 1970, Dr Victor L Loosanoff, who was a Director of the United States Shellfish Laboratory at Milford, Connecticut for 30 years, founded and headed the Aquaculture scientists and tested specimens of mussels from around the world. They determined that New Zealand’s Perna could be an ideal source of Mucopolysaccharides, as well as the special bioactive polyunsaturated fatty acids from mussels, the Omega-3 marine oils.
By the early 1970’s Dr Loosanoff helped establish the green lipped mussel farms in the unpolluted and protected waters of the beautiful Marlborough Sounds. Owing to this aquaculture development, the green lipped mussel was introduced as a health food product and opened the Aquaculture Inc. company in California. Aquaculture Inc. in California is the first and original producer of the green lipped mussel powder using New Zealand’s Perna Canaliculus.
In 1985 a new company was formed in New Zealand by Dick Dorst, Enzaq Aquaculture, Ltd. This was developed to improve methods of processing mussels to achieve consistent high quality powder. New systems of shucking the meats from the shell and quickly processing them into high grade mussel powder were developed, called the Enzaq Process (now known as Enzaq Flash-Dry Process). This ‘one-step, short time process eliminates many steps of handling and exposure to heat and air of traditional freeze drying that degrade the desirable nutritional elements.
A new factory was built in 1996 at Blenheim, Marlborough, New Zealand which incorporated the technology that was developed 10 years ago. The Enzaq Mussel Powder was and still is produced under a Risk Management Programme (RMP) governed by strict government inspections of MAF, NZFSA, USFDA, and EU certification using modern HACCP methods of quality control. These standards exceed Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) guidelines.
Since 2005, production have been routinely assayed for anti-inflammatory bioactivity by the Bioactivity Investigation Group at the Wellington School of Medicine to ensure the highest consistent bioactive quality in the industry.
About Dr. Orville H. Miller
Dr Orville H. Miller was born in Portland, Oregon and earned his PhD degree in Pharmaceutical Chemistry from the University of Washington in 1945. Dr Miller worked as drug analyst for the US Food and Drug Administration, Federal Security Agency in San Francisco and California for five years. He became the Director of Research for Groner Labs and research chemist at Consolidated Dairy Products before being appointed Professor of Pharmacy, School of Pharmacy, University of Southern California, (USC) Los Angeles, California, in 1950. Dr Miller retired in 1981 as Professor Emeritus.
Dr Miller served as pharmaceutical consultant for numerous laboratories, official agencies and medical facilities, including the Los Angeles County Hospital for 15 years. He was Fulbright Professor at the University of Cairo in the early 60’s. His special work included the investigation of amino barbiturates, alkaloids of polyploid stramonium, lactose production using ion-exchange, protein hydrolysates, prolonged release dosage forms, ointment bases, chemical sterilization of pharmaceuticals, and natural folk remedies. He has had published over 25 papers in the field of analysis of pharmaceuticals, product information and evaluation of folk medicine.
Dr Miller was a member of the American Society of Hospital Pharmacists, American Pharmaceutical Association, Southern California Society of Hospital Pharmacists and the Academy of Pharmaceutical Sciences and was for 10 years a member of the Review Committee of the United States Pharmacopeia, (USP).
His doctoral thesis on the effect of alkaloids from native plants was the beginning of a continuing 45-year study of folk medicine practices around the world. His extensive travels and personal research includes remedies from North Africa, Europe, the Middle East, Indonesia, and China, as well as Central and North America.
Seafood has become a vital part of the American diet. Dr Arthur Hull Hayes, then United States Food and Drug Commissioner, noted in an article in Timemagazine, March 15 1982, “The tissues of the human body are constantly moistened by a briny solution thought to be of about the same salinity as the primordial sea from which life emerged. We are miniature oceans encased in skin.” After 32 years of constant research, Aquaculture Inc. has achieved its primary goal, to provide a significant renewable nutritional bounty from the Sea.