Making Modifilan®
Pacific Standard Distributors, Inc.
To make Modifilan, raw seaweed (Laminaria japonica) is hand-harvested in the northwest Pacific, off the Kuril Islands. The Kuril Islands are unpopulated territories which belong to Russia, though they are claimed by Japan as their “Northern Territories.” The exact location is latitude 46.1 N / longitude 150.4 E. This is one of very few natural habitats in the world where Laminaria grows to a size large enough to extract the inner part of the leaves. This is not a farmed seaweed, but a wild kelp. Here the c old water flowing down from the Arctic meets the warm water from the south in a great swirl that forms the best habitat for all types of seafood, from shrimp to whales.
The Laminaria kelp is cut by divers in the shallower parts of the ocean bed, at a depth of 5 to 15 meters. Individual leaves are cut using knives in order to preserve the habitat, because Laminaria does not grow back at the same spot in the same quality and size when it is torn off, drag-harvested, or trawled, as is sometimes done commercially. Pacific Standard Distributors owns the sole right to harvest seaweed in this part of the ocean.
Divers rope three to five leaves together and a small boat tugs them onto shore. The leaves are then put on wooden fences and dried by the sun before being transported to the nearest commercial port (about 600 km away on the Island of Urup, where the seaweed is harvested). The dried seaweed goes to our factory (a very modest facility), where the dried leaves are soaked in cold spring water for about 4 hours. A very small volume of spring water is used, since seaweed gives up its water-soluble polysaccharides in fresh water, and we want to retain them.
When the leaves soak in water and appear to be of same size and thickness as they were fresh, the outer part is skinned off and put into a schnek feeder (similar to a meat grinder), which grinds the outer layers of the skin into a paste. This paste is mixed back with the inner part of the Laminaria that was left after the skin was removed.
This mass, along with the remaining water in which it was initially soaked (we keep it in the product all the way to the end) is pressed through a tight mesh net similar to cheesecloth. What comes out after the pressing is a heavy gel that is kept for further processing. The sand-like substance that is left in the net is disposed of. In this manner, all heavy indigestible cellulose fibers are removed naturally.
The batch of squeezed gel is then placed into a cold-temperature chamber dehumidifier, where it is quick-dried with cool air. As it is dried, the gel turns into a big chunk, like a rock. That chunk is broken into smaller chips, placed in a large grinder and turned into powder. This is Modifilan.
Modifilan is referred to as an extract, but basically it is the dried, concentrated juice of brown seaweed. It is a simple and absolutely natural product, a true food substance that is not formulated. We do not try to re-create nature, which is a different approach from most of the supplements found on the market today. Modifilan is a registered trade name, and the process described above is part of the patent for this product. No other maker of seaweed supplements offers this kind of product. We are proud to present Modifilan as the most minerally potent and at the same time fully digestible natural food source of what brown seaweed offers. As the final step, the bulk Modifilan powder is encapsulated in the USA at a facility that is FDA-licensed and GMP-compliant. Every batch of raw unprocessed material is subject to USDA inspection and approval. Pacific Standard Distributors, Inc. is an FDA-registered company.
