ABSTRACT
Radurization and radicidation of spices are technically feasible and economically promising processes. They offer the best solution to the problem of decontaminating natural spices. Spices are used in virtually all categories of the food industry — meat, fish, vegetable products, bakery products, and other prepared and convenience foods. The meat industry and soup manufacturers use the largest quantities of spices. With regard to whole and ground natural spices, both the producing countries and the food industries that use spices as ingredients of various manufactured foods face the problem of the high microbial count of spices, especially the contamination by molds3,4 and heat-resistant bacterial spores. In general, black pepper, caraway, coriander, capsicum peppers, ginger, marjoram, and turmeric are the most highly contaminated spices. The majority of the microbial flora of spices consists of aerobic spore-forming bacteria. E. M. Powers et al. tested 110 samples of various spices for incidence and levels of Bacillus cereus.
