Food irradiation

2/21/01 Food Irradiation: Solution to Hunger or Killer Mutagen? People all over the world are starving for fresh, uncontaminated food. Insects, pests, and invisible microorganisms are not what the public want to find on their dinner plates. Throughout history, life has depended on ways of treating food to reduce or destroy these naturally occurring harmful contaminants and to enable foods to be stored after harvesting so that they can be saved for use at other times of the year. With increasing

Food Irradiation: Solution to Hunger or Killer Mutagen? People all over the world are starving for fresh, uncontaminated food. Insects, pests, and invisible microorganisms are not what the public want to find on their dinner plates. Throughout history, life has depended on ways of treating food to reduce or destroy these naturally occurring harmful contaminants and to enable foods to be stored after harvesting so that they can be saved for use at other times of the year. With increasing populations

The first fundamental concept for food irradiation was patented over a hundred years ago in 1905, and yet it continues to be a relevant topic during discussions of more modern technologies such as genetic engineering or robotics (Spiller). Food irradiation’s continued significance is easily explained by looking back on its history fraught with constant battles for its widespread implication. This almost ancient technology has seen controversy up into the 21st century that rivals the safety debates

Overview of the history of food irradiation practices in the United States from World War II era to the end of the 20th century, and speculation about its future commercial prospects. Researchers in the United States and Great Britain filed patents in 1905 for using ionizing radiation to kill food-borne bacteria (Spiller, J. (2004)). Therefore, food irradiation has over 100 years of history. Food irradiation (the application of ionizing radiation to food) is a technology that improves the safety

Food and food products purchased in supermarkets around the world are known to have chemicals to kill bacteria, improve food safety, and increase shelf life. According to an article on Waking Times, meat and poultry purchased in markets are known to have at least 10 chemical additives including Sodium Benzoate, Sodium Proprionate, Benzoic Acid, Nitrites and nitrates, as well as traces of antibiotics that were given to the animals (Longo). However there is another way to fight off bacteria and harmful

of food irradiation Table 1: Selected milestone history of food irradiation Year Events 1905 J. Appleby & A.J. Banks: British patent: “to bring about an improvement in the conditions of foodstuffs” and in “their general keeping quality by radiation of radioactive substances” 1957 First commercial application: electron beam irradiation of spices in Germany 1966 First International Symposium on Food Irradiation, Karlsruhe, Germany 1970–1982 International Project in the Field of Food Irradiation (IFIP)

In modern society, science has been heavily involved with the production of food. Due to urbanisation, most people in developed countries as well as many people in developing countries neither have the resources nor the time necessary to carry out subsistence farming that can produce an adequate amount of food for themselves and their family on a regular basis. This sort of farming is only possibly in a rural environment. Because of this, urban families are troubled with the task of finding fresh

Food irradiation is the exposure of a carefully measured amount of ionizing radiation to food. This is done in a processing room or a sealed chamber for a specified amount of time. With food irradiation, energy from radiation breaks chemical bonds, leaving the food fresh and nutritious, but with specific benefits, depending on the treatment type. (1) Food irradiation kills bacteria in the food and interferes with its molecular bonds to stop it from multiplying. (2) There are three ways that food

Food irradiation is a process that is performed on food to improve their safety, by killing insects, viruses, and harmful bacteria’s. Problem: The question we will try to answer during our experiment is as follows; What effect does radiation have on mitotic activity within the cell? What is the outcome of food irradiation, and how it preserves food? Hypothesis: Food irradiation is a technology that improves the safety and extends the shelf life of foods by reducing or eliminating microorganisms

3. Results and discussion 3.1. Physical characteristics 3.1.1. Effect of gamma-ray irradiation on sludge settleability In static sedimentation tests, a distinct sedimentation interface between the supernatant and sludge was observed for all samples with different irradiation doses, whereas the expected rapid improvement of the irradiated sedimentation rate was not observed (Fig. 1). These trends agreed with the results of Meeroff et al (2004). According to the sedimentation curves, there are two