Food Irradiation and its Application to Pacific Basin Countries

Abstract

In many parts of the world 30-40% of the food produced are lost by sprouting, infestation by insects and other pests, and microbial spoilage, and the losses may occur mostly after harvest or catch, especially during storage at high ambient temperature. If it were possible to eliminate or reduce these losses even by a few percents, millions of hungry people could be fed better. Research and development work carried out after the 2nd World War has shown treatment with ionizing radiation to effectively eliminate or reduce spoilage caused by microorganisms, insects or sprouting (e.g., in onions and potatoes); irradiation can reliably eliminate some pathogens such as Salmonellae and Vibrio parahaemolyticus. Food irradiation is gaining increasing recognition as a physical method of food preservation which is characterized by less energy consumption. Several important breakthroughs in food irradiation have been made in recent years which renewed industrial interest in food irradiation in various countries, especially in developing countries in Asia and the Pacific. In the present paper, several topics on the recent research and development work on food irradiation with special reference to the status of the Asian Regional Cooperative Project on Food Irradiation (RPFI) will be discussed.