Detection Methods for Irradiated Foods

Food irradiation is a process which can improve the quality of food and extend its shelf-life. As awareness of the potential for irradiating foods has grown in recent years, so has the consumer's insistence on the right to choose whether or not they eat such food. The ability to reliably identify irradiated foods is fundamental to ensuring that right can be enforced. Detection Methods for Irradiated Foods provides an up-to-date account on the scope and limitations of the analytical methods currently available. A variety of methods are described, including the use of ESR spectroscopy, thermoluminescence, radiation-induced alkycyclobutanones and hydrocarbons, and the DNA comet assay which has been applied to a range of foods from spices to mechanically recovered meat. Such is the rapid progress which has been made in this field in recent years that five of the detection methods described in the book are currently being considered as Official European Standards by the EC. This new book draws together all the known methods for detecting irradiated foods, both conventional and new, and will act as an authoritative guide to all analytical scientists and food chemists who are interested in this important and topical subject.