Researchers
prove food safety to help commercialize irradiation technology
Source of Article: http://news.msu.edu/story/5777/ Published: Dec. 29, 2008 Bradley
Marks and Sanghyup Jeong
are proving that X-rays can kill bacterial pathogens such as E. coli 0157:H7
and salmonella on the most delicate vegetables, extending shelf life in the
bargain. Irradiation from other sources has been used for years to protect
ground meat and other products, essentially pasteurizing food without cooking
it. “Our
work to date has shown that X-ray technology is very effective in killing the
bacterial pathogens without causing undesirable changes in product quality,”
Marks said. They
do it by applying a higher dose than is used for medical X-ray imaging, yet
less than is used by competing irradiation methods. That means less
protective shielding is necessary, so the equipment is more compact and food
companies can install it at their processing plants. Currently, food must be
transported to specialty facilities, which eliminates irradiation as an
option for much fresh produce. Marks
and Jeong work in the MSU Department of Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering and collaborate
with Elliot Ryser, a microbiologist in the
Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition. They are using MSU’s unique biosafety level-2
pilot processing facility to validate technology being commercialized by Rayfresh Foods Inc. of “The
problem the leafy green industry faces is there is absolutely no kill step in
the process of cleaning, rinsing and bagging the product. There is nothing they
can do,” explained Peter Schoch, Rayfresh’s CEO. The potential for widespread
contamination is compounded by the mingling of greens from different sources
in processing plants, he said. Food
irradiation – which does not in any way render food radioactive – today uses
gamma rays from radioactive material or machine-generated electron beams, Schoch said, both of which tend to cause cellular damage
and visually degrade food. X-rays promise a gentler, more scalable solution. Rayfresh recently landed its first contract to build an
X-ray machine to treat ground beef for Omaha Steaks, which inspected the
prototype at MSU. The university’s validation work was pivotal in winning
that first order, Schoch said. “We
also have very significant interest from people who produce and use food
service lettuce,” he added, a product connected to a recent E. coli illness
outbreak in Before
regulators and the market will accept such devices, however, their use for
each food and target bacteria must be scientifically validated. That ensures
a continuing role for the MSU testing facility and staff, who also are
working on validating the technology to kill salmonella on almonds. Earlier
this year the U.S. Food and Drug Administration published a final rule
allowing the use of irradiation for iceberg lettuce and fresh spinach, a move
expected to open the doors to greater use of the technology for leafy greens.
Click to www.fda.gov/consumer/updates/irradiation082208.html
for more information. Regulators
have studied irradiation of food for 40 years and approved its use for red
meat in 1997. Irradiation also now may be applied to other foods such as
spices, poultry and shellfish including oysters, clams and scallops. The
world food irradiation market is predicted to exceed $2.3 billion by 2012,
according to Global Industry Analysts Inc. To
learn more about Rayfresh Foods, go to http://rayfreshfoods.com. For more on the
MSU Department of Biosystems and Agricultural
Engineering, click to www.egr.msu.edu/age.
Also see ''How the bugs come back and bite us,'' http://news.msu.edu/story/1010. |
Copyright (C) All rights reserved under FoodHACCP.com
If you have any comments, please send your
email to info@foodhaccp.com
