ABSTRACT

The idea of preserving foods through the reduction or destruction of the microorganisms they harbor is centuries old. In the eighteenth century, boiling was used to preserve meat extracts and vinegar. The idea of applying the pasteurization method to milk was first commercially tested in Germany in 1880, but was focused solely upon the preservation of milk in order to improve its shelf life, rather than its health characteristics. The historic coincidence in timing between work on pasteurization and irradiation was not accidental. Once the relationship between spoilage and disease was known, efforts were put in motion to eliminate both menaces. The milk industry provides us with another interesting parallel to food irradiation. The process of milk irradiation was used during 1930s in order to increase the vitamin D content of milk. The case of irradiated milk is interesting, because it allows a strikingly curious example of a technology which is as close to food irradiation as one can get.