Food Irradiation

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4 Irradiation
Food irradiation is the processing of food products by ionizing radiation which is used primarily as a preservation method to control reduces microbial load and foodborne pathogens. Additionally, irradiation is widely applied in order to reduce or eliminate insect infestation, prevent the sprouting of root crops, and extend the shelf life of perishable products (Centre for Food Safety, Food and Environmental Hygiene Department,
The Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region 2009, p. 2 f). Irradiation also has a potential to induce protein modification which depend on the dose of radiation and exposure time (Kuan et al. 2013, p. 105). Moreover, the irradiation processing was a cause of change of epitopes on the …show more content…

(2013, p. 2371), showed that the allergen levels of soybeans that have been irradiated by different does (0, 2.5, 5, 7.5, 10, 20, and 30 kGy) were almost the same as non-irradiated soybean. The competitive inhibition ELISA analyses represented that irradiation was not significantly affected on the change in the allergen contents of soybeans, but the soybean trypsin inhibitor was decrease. In addition, the effect of irradiation on the different foodstuffs related to allergincity was carried out. For instance, Luo et al. (2013, p. 1141) studied the effect of gamma irradiation on Ara h 6 allergenicity reduction in peanut. The result suggested that irradiation influenced significantly on secondary and tertiary structures alteration of Ara h 6. Increasing the dose of gamma irradiation also deceased the antigenicity of isolated peanut allergen Ara h 6 and a whole peanut protein extract. Moreover, there was a good correlation between IgG binding to Ara h 6 and the loss in a-helix was reported. This indicated that reducing or eliminating peanut allergenicity by irradiation might be one of an efficient method. On the other hand, the studies of effect of irradiation on egg products were observed. Change of allergenicity of a hen’s egg albumin (ovalbumin) in white layer cakes containing gamma-irradiated egg white which was irradiated at 10 or 20 kGy were examined by using an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). The result suggested that mouse anti-ovalbumin IgG (mouse IgG) recognized ovalbumin in the cakes with irradiated egg white better than that in the control sample. While, the intact ovalbumin contents in the control sample declined significantly in treatments. This result indicated that the allergenicity was decreased by applying irradiation (Lee et al. 2004, p.

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