Microbial decontamination in the food industry: Novel methods and applications

The problem of creating microbiologically safe food with an acceptable shelf-life and quality for the consumer is a constant challenge for the food industry. This book provides a comprehensive guide to the decontamination problems faced by the industry, and the current and emerging methods being used to solve them.The introduction deals with various food commodities such as fresh produce, meats, seafood, nuts, juices and dairy products, and provides background on contamination routes and outbreaks as well as proposed processing methods for each commodity. Part two goes on to review current and emerging non-chemical and non-thermal decontamination methods such as high hydrostatic pressure, pulsed electric fields, irradiation, power ultrasound and non-thermal plasma. It concludes with a detailed exploration of thermal methods such as microwave, radio-frequency and infrared heating and food surface pasteurization. The final sections discuss chemical decontamination methods with ozone, chlorine dioxide, electrolyzed oxidizing water, organic acids and dense phase CO2 and focus on current and emerging packaging technologies and post-packaging decontamination.