Non-Invasive Method for Predicting Safety and Quality of Foods

Food safety is critically important to the myriad of highly perishable smoked and cured foods produced in the United States. Market demand is for lower salt products, increasing the food safety risk compared to more traditional forms of the same food. Smoked and cured seafood products is a multi-billion dollar industry in the United States. These products, particularly fish roe foods, are destined for export markets. International demand is growing for US cured and smoked aquatic foods, from both the wild fishery and aquaculture. These product command high prices: salmon caviar up to $5.00/oz, and black caviar, tens of dollars per ounce. Customer are placing stringent demands on the microbiological safety of these foods. Better ways of assuring good process control during manufacture are needed. Salt is added for the unique flavor and texture characteristic of caviars and smoked fish, and also to control harmful bacteria. However, a less than optimal number of food safety tests are conducted during or after production because of the high cost of lost product from sampling and the long time required for currently available tests. A rapid test, particularly for salt, which would not require product destruction during testing would be an important development. In this project, we develop a method using a special type of infrared spectrometer. This instrument can measure both the water content and salt content in intact food items. In this project, we will test:, pollock, herring and sturgeon caviar, cured salmon (lox type products) and smoked salmon.