Current Projects
A variety of cooperative, collaborative and contract studies are carried out in the Food Processing and Packaging science focus area. To find out more about how your organization can benefit from IFSH's expertise and capabilities in this area, please contact:
Armand Paradis, Director, Business Development
708.563.8175 (office)
708.821.8615 (mobile)
Highlights: Current Topics of Investigation
- Investigating the effect of a non-destructive high voltage leak detection technique on physical properties of plastic- and foil-laminated packages for foods.
- Preparing a migration database of additives and contaminants in food packaging systems for use in predictive models to potentially reduce the amount of time required by the food industry to prepare industry FDA Food Contact Notification (FCN) submissions, as well as the amount of laboratory effort and experimental costs.
- Developing validated predictive inactivation models for nonproteolytic C. botulinum spores that can be broadly used to determine the processing conditions required to produce a safe, high quality chilled extended shelf life low-acid products.
- Determining the commercial feasibility of producing safe, high quality chilled extended shelf life low-acid food products (such as meats) via high pressure-mild temperature processing.
- Evaluating the effectiveness of cold plasma and pulsed light/ultraviolet light technologies for microbial destruction of vegetative cells attached to food surfaces of low moisture foods, such as infant formula and raw almonds, and which may provide a means for decontaminating solid foods with little, if any, degradation to quality.
- Investigating alternative commercial fresh produce washing techniques, including a range of antimicrobial sanitizers and with the addition of high-powered ultrasound, to reduce or eliminate bacterial and viral contamination on fresh-cut leafy green vegetables and in produce wash water.
- Validating and evaluating the performance of various microwave-based applicators designed specifically for pasteurizing shell eggs.
- Determining and analyzing the efficacy of cooling methods used in school food service operations to cool leftover foods to produce recommendations on proper cooling methods in compliance with FDA Food Code regulations.
- Using the molecular subtyping method, pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE), to study the genetic diversity of proteolytic and nonproteolytic C. botulinum strains, as well as to provide insight into the behavior of C. botulinum foodborne isolates.
Last modified: 05/01/2012 16:46:47
