ABSTRACT
Many potential applications o f food irradiation have been mentioned in the previous chapters, particularly Chapter 4, where the biological effects of ionizing radiation were discussed. Following a proposal of the Joint FAO/IAEA/WHO Expert Committee (1), possible practical uses of food irradiation have been grouped into low-, medium-, and high-dose applications in the overview presented in Table 1. This separation of low-dose from medium-dose treatments and of medium-dose from high-dose treatments is somewhat arbitrary, and the existence of a sharp dividing line between these treatments should not be assumed.
The dose levels indicated in Table 1 can serve only as a rough guideline. As explained in Chapter 2, it is not possible to irradiate a food package in such a way that each food particle in that package receives exactly the same dose.
