Implications of the use of irradiation in the processing of animal origin foods: Review

Food irradiation has been used since the early twentieth century. It has become a safe method of animal food preservation, mainly by keeping their sensory and nutritional characteristics intact, reducing economic losses and increasing products durability. The technique can effectively eliminate or reduce foodborne microorganisms, parasites and pests without significant impact and change in composition, ensuring food safety and nutritional quality. Irradiation is currently used in meat and chicken giblets, beef, dairy products and other animal products. There is a growing consumer demand for nutritious and safe food worldwide. At the same time, contamination by microorganisms, especially of animal origin, remains a major public health problem, causing a significant increase in foodborne diseases, and thus affecting the productivity of human populations. The energy involved in irradiation is not powerful enough to affect the nucleus of the atoms within the food and, since the food does not come into contact with the radioactive source, it does not become radioactive. The process involves exposing the food, either packaged or in bulk, to carefully controlled amounts of ionizing radiation for a specific time to destroy pathogenic microorganisms. The limitation of this process concerns consumer acceptance, because they associate irradiation with radioactivity. Therefore, the present study aimed to clarify the practical benefits of food irradiation associated to a food preservation system, through a systematic literature review.