Service Based Learning

Food irradiation : efficacy and safety

At the advent of the twentieth century , the technology of milk pasteurization and retort canning were developed and promoted as a preventive measure against foodborne diseases in response to the growing public concern on food safety . These methods had successfully eliminated the public fear of typhoid fever as well as botulism that could be contacted from watered milk and commercially canned products respectively . Nevertheless , as the twenty-first century begins foodborne disease causing agents still remains a major public health because of the presence of new pathogens

(Tauxe , 2001

In the United States alone , an estimated average of 76 million cases of foodborne infections and about 325 ,000 hospitalizations has been recorded each year . The five most common food pathogens are said to be Salmonella , Camplylobacter , Listeria , Toxoplasma , and Escherichia coli O157 and other Shiga-toxin-producing E .coli . These food pathogens have been reported to cause around 3 .5 million infections , 33 ,000 hospitalization cases , and about 1 ,600 deaths annually (Mead , et al 1999 Tauxe , 2001 . The economic burden of foodborne diseases has also been substantial . Treatment of bacterial infections alone was estimated to reach up to an average of 6 .7 billion annually (Buzby , Roberts , Lin MacDonald , 1996

Today 's technology offers an alternative method to ensure food safety in addition to the traditional sanitation and pasteurization methods - food irradiation . Food irradiation is the use of a very high energy of irradiation to eradicate microbes in food . It has also become a standard process in...