Irradiation Treatment of Animal Foods

The presence of pathogenic microbes in food is a serious global problem. Irradiation, as an effective method, destroy pathogens reducing threat that come by uncontrolled food. In this paper we have treated irradiation of animal foods and its effect, to decrease total microbial load on them. Foods were irradiated with a gamma irradiator GU-3 (Cs-137 source) with the rotation technique. Uniformity dose rate used was 106 % and average dose rate 4.68 Gy/min. According to standards, doses used to irradiate food varied from 0 to 5 kGy. From experimental results it was observed that with increasing absorbed dose, total microbial load was reduced with some orders. Variation of log N / N0 (N- total microbial load of irradiated food and N0 of non-irradiated food) with dose, was approximated linearly. Based on this variation was defined D10, as the dose that cause “death†of about 90 % of microbes in food (log N/N0= -1). D values found experimentally had a good correspondence with them defined theoretically (D10 = |1 / slope|).