A new study carried out by Penn State researchers shows that a light-based food sanitization technique works.
According to the researchers, the pulsed light technique shows promise as an effective alternative to the chemical, heat and water-based antimicrobial technologies commonly used in the food industry.
According to the Centers for Disease Control, upwards of 9 million people get sick, 56,000 are hospitalized and 1,300 die from foodborne diseases in the U.S. Despite improvements in technology and increased regulation, food contamination remains a global problem with major public health implications.
The best outcome of the research would be improvements to prevent illness. The goal is to reduce the number of deaths from food poisoning.
The results of the study were published in the Journal of Food Engineering. The spectrum and energy characteristics of the light were defined by the study.
Ed Mills, associate professor of meat science, and Josh Cassar, a graduate student in animal science, collaborated on the project.
"I returned to Penn State for graduate school after working for a poultry processor and we wanted to bring this technique to market." We collaborated with corporate partners to implement the technology into their facilities.
The lab has applied the technique to a wide range of foods over the past two decades. In order to test the technology on eggs, the team used a conveyor designed to test the process in an industrial setting with the xenon flashlamps.
The team hopes that this technology will be adopted by the food industry sooner rather than later due to its ability to make food safer to consume.
The food industry has been using low intensity UV light as an antimicrobial treatment since the 1960s. The technique of using low levels of UV light could only be used for a long time.
Mills said that the system was a completely different one. The stored energy in a pulse allows us to deliver more power in less time.
Light would be applied to the product as it passed by on a food conveyor, where the team's technique is designed to be deployed. Mills explained that the treatment delivers a higher intensity of light because it is pulsed, which results in a quicker reduction in the number of organisms.
The analogy is a dam in a river. There is a burst of energy when you open the gates. We are doing that with light.
The use of pulsed light could be an alternative to current antimicrobial interventions in the food industry but could also be applied more broadly in other antimicrobial applications.
He said that pulse light is another tool in the toolkit. It can be used in place of a water-based sterilant. It will continue to develop and hopefully will provide us with an effective and efficient tool for Sanitation in a range of environments and industries.
More information: Joshua R. Cassar et al, Characterization of pulsed light for microbial inactivation, Journal of Food Engineering (2022). DOI: 10.1016/j.jfoodeng.2022.111152
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