DEMAND FOR THE IRRADIATED FOODSTUFF SHALL INCREASE

Dr. Hasan ALKAN
Gamma-Pak Sterilizasyon A.Ş.

According to the reports issued by United Nations, half of the world population is suffering from hunger and malnutrition. Food-borne deseases is a big problem for both developing and developed countries. There are two ways against this problem. First is to increase the production and the second is to preservation the foods and increase their quality.

In order to avoid from food borne deseases, several methods have been developed. Conservation, cooling, freezing, additives and chemicals are known as traditional methods. Although these methods are applied commonly, the substantial food losses and the diseases stem from foodstuff cannot be avoided and in contrary there is an increase on them. The infection and toxication based on foodstuff creates serious problems in health, economic and social problems cannot be avoided. For example every year in the USA 33 million people and in Canada 2 million people suffer from the diseases stem from microbial contamination in the foodstuff in the developing and undeveloped countries the case is more serious.
In other ways known preservation methods are not sufficient in some cases. Chemical methods harm the public health and therefore fumigants such as methyl bromide shall be prohibited by UN Environmental Protection Agency. For that reason for the last 30 year an alternative method has been seek to be used instead of this traditional method and irradiation method is accepted is a good one.

Irradiation is a technology developed to increase the foodstuff quality and their shelf life. Also it is a physical process such as conservation and freezing methods but ionization energy is used instead of heat energy. Dose measurement unit for irradiation process is kilogray (kGy). Since the product temperature increases only 1-2 °C during the process, this method is also known as cold pasteurization. The process can be applied when the product is in its final package or inside the big packets and bags and it is affected for all the products in either room temperature or frozen ones. The products to be radiated shall be put inside 0.5 m3 containers in their own packages or loaded to the pallets and sent to the irradiation cell via conveyors and after it is irradiated in several positions in this cell products are automatically taken out of the irradiation cell via conveyors. This technology is the application of the ionized energy such as X-rays, gamma rays or accelerated electrons. Today cobalt-60 is generally used as an irradiation source. On the other hand recently electron accelerators have been used especially for the small packages. During the radiation process electromagnetic type gamma waves like the radio waves but having more energy pass through the foodstuff destroys the microorganism (pests, bacteria), parasites, insects, their eggs and larva and in this way they protect the product quality and increase the shelf life.

At the moment irradiation applications are mostly used for cereals, spices, dry vegetable and fruit assortments, herbal teas. If we would like to say the general application areas according to the foodstuff types they eliminate the harmful microorganisms causing food toxicities. White and red meat, fish and shelled sea products are also included in this group. Furthermore the microorganisms causing deformation and rusting in the foodstuff are killed, shooting, grassing and budding of the plants during storage are postponed and furthermore maturing of the spices, cereals, beans, dry vegetables and dry fruits. In the world there is exactly no country, which does not apply irradiation on the spices and dry herbal products. In general the number of microorganisms in spices per gram is at million levels. These are colliform, salmonella, pest, fertilization bacteria, spores and larva. If Aspergillus type pest producing Afla toxin are killed at the beginning by irradiation, afla toxin accumulation on the product shall be avoided. Irradiation only kills the pests after afla toxin formation they cannot be eliminated in any way. As it can be seen such contaminated spices and herbal plants are consumed at our tables without any procedure. When they are added to the white and red products, their quality decrease and shelf life shorten.
In some countries in which irradiation method is not used, spices are cleaned by ethylene oxide, which is a toxic and cancerogenic gas. This method remains additives on the product and therefore might have negative effects on human health.

Irradiated foodstuff never becomes radioactive. The rariafion emitting from Cobalt-60 inside the stainless steel or the rays produced in electron accelerators similar to the x-ray devices (electromagnetic waves) pass through the product and show their effect. The products are never in contact with the light source. As one does not harmed due to the x-ray film taken at a hospital or X-rays used at the control at the airport gate entries, when applied properly irradiation technology has no harmful affect on the foodstuff.
Food irradiation process started to be applied in order to eliminate trichinosis found in pork in 1920s. After that it was used for the radiation of the hamburger meatballs in French in 1930 and in the USA army in 1943. The main development was occurred after the establishment of the trade plants in 1960s. National and international institutions have performed several researches on the reliability of radiated foodstuff. United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), World Health Organization (WHO) and International Atomic Energy Association (IAEA) Experts Committee evaluated the reliability and benefits of irradiated foodstuff at the meetings held on 1964, 1970 and 1980 and discussions have been made over 500 researches on this subject. Upon these evaluations it was concluded that the foodstuff irradiated no more than 10 kGy is suitable for human consumption and reliable on nutrition value, toxicology and microbiology aspects. The same evaluation was made in University of Cambridge in England in 1962 and CAST in the USA in 1986 and the same results were obtained. According to the researches made in the USA it was found that the foodstuff irradiated more than 10 kGy has no deformation other than a little taste lose. As a result of this research USA authorities approved that some herbal teas and spices can be irradiated up to 30 kGy and some hospital foods and astronaut food up to 50 kGy. As a result of all these researches and evaluation of the results, international food codex commission published a general standard for the irradiated foodstuff in 1983 and they are revised in 1993 and 2001.
Today in more than 40 countries more than 200 products approved to be irradiated. Especially after the approval of the irradiation processes for the red meat and its products this method widen all over the world rapidly.

Since 1970 a lot of countries including Turkey approved foodstuff irradiation. Turkey is included the countries approving the foodstuff irradiation on 6 November 1999 by issuing "Regulation for Food Irradiation". On the other hand we should mention that EU approves the trade of only the irradiated spices.

The first irradiation facility enabling foodstuff irradiation in Turkey was established in 1992 under Turkish Atomic Energy Authority by the assistance of United Nations UNDP for research purposes. Gamma-Pak Sterilizasyon A.Ş. the first irradiation facility for trade purposes was incorporated in 1994 in Çerkezköy.