Irradiation of food as a preservative

Irradiation of Food as a Preservative <Tab/>Irradiation of food as a preservative basically means taking the food and sterilizing it to destroy all bacteria that exists in it. It also increases the shelf life of the product and decreases the chance of it being spoiled. This process can be compared to basic pasteurization of foods. The biggest difference between the two methods is that they use two different forms of …

…a better process to use on food. Since it is more powerful and more effective, one would feel safer eating irradiated food. One might be concerned that if food is irradiated, it contains harmful radiation. However, this is not the case. The only way to spread radiation to the food would be to physically touch the food with radioactive material. Since the radioactive material is never brought into contact with the food this cannot happen.