The FAO, the WHO and the CDC state that millions of food-borne diseases are registered every year. These food poisoning cause among others of course immense economic burden due to food recall and medical treatments. Moreover it is also reported that food availability, abundance and safety are under threat and that by 2050 global production of safe and nutritious food must increase by 70 % to feed the growing world population and that a huge amount of food (~ 40%, -1.3 billion tons/year) is lost between production and consumption, with a wasted investment for the farmers and parallel increase of the cost for consumers and a burden for the environment. In order to solve the health, economic, ethical and environmental problems, new solutions are needed. To increase food availability efforts are being made to increase the productivity and several methodologies for increasing food production are presently identified and applied such as: mechanization, irrigation, use of fertilizers, improved crop varieties, control of weeds and insects, new varieties of farm animals infrastructure development. Improving yield is only one aspect of increasing food supply. It is equally important to conserve and protect what is produced. During the journey from producer to consumer, if food products (from plants and animals) are not handled and packed with care they can be contaminated with pathogenic microorganisms, causing additional food loss along with highly worrying safety risks. An innovative route to enhance efficiency, energy reduction, and waste reduction, and provide safe food to everyone is through the technological convergence approach: current and older food processing and packaging technologies may be combined for different purposes. In this paper the advantages of combining emerging food packaging technology with food irradiation will be described. Also, updated information of active nanopackaging and its combination with irradiation processing will be presented. In particular the paper will contain: main principles of active packaging technologies; the reason to combine radiation technology with active nanopackaging; a selection of case-history; and market analysis and future trends.
APPLICATION OF RADIATION TECHNOLOGY TO FOOD PACKAGING
Sossio Cimmino;
2017
Abstract
The FAO, the WHO and the CDC state that millions of food-borne diseases are registered every year. These food poisoning cause among others of course immense economic burden due to food recall and medical treatments. Moreover it is also reported that food availability, abundance and safety are under threat and that by 2050 global production of safe and nutritious food must increase by 70 % to feed the growing world population and that a huge amount of food (~ 40%, -1.3 billion tons/year) is lost between production and consumption, with a wasted investment for the farmers and parallel increase of the cost for consumers and a burden for the environment. In order to solve the health, economic, ethical and environmental problems, new solutions are needed. To increase food availability efforts are being made to increase the productivity and several methodologies for increasing food production are presently identified and applied such as: mechanization, irrigation, use of fertilizers, improved crop varieties, control of weeds and insects, new varieties of farm animals infrastructure development. Improving yield is only one aspect of increasing food supply. It is equally important to conserve and protect what is produced. During the journey from producer to consumer, if food products (from plants and animals) are not handled and packed with care they can be contaminated with pathogenic microorganisms, causing additional food loss along with highly worrying safety risks. An innovative route to enhance efficiency, energy reduction, and waste reduction, and provide safe food to everyone is through the technological convergence approach: current and older food processing and packaging technologies may be combined for different purposes. In this paper the advantages of combining emerging food packaging technology with food irradiation will be described. Also, updated information of active nanopackaging and its combination with irradiation processing will be presented. In particular the paper will contain: main principles of active packaging technologies; the reason to combine radiation technology with active nanopackaging; a selection of case-history; and market analysis and future trends.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
