The International Facility for Food Irradiation Technology (IFFIT) was a research and training centre at the Institute of Atomic Research in Agriculture in

Wageningen Wageningen () is a municipality and a historic city in the central Netherlands, in the province of Gelderland. It is famous for Wageningen University, which specialises in life sciences. The municipality had a population of in , of which many t ...

Netherlands ) , anthem = ( en, "William of Nassau") , image_map = , map_caption = , subdivision_type = Sovereign state , subdivision_name = Kingdom of the Netherlands , established_title = Before independence , established_date = Spanish Netherl ...

, sponsored by the

Food and Agriculture Organization The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)french: link=no, Organisation des Nations unies pour l'alimentation et l'agriculture; it, Organizzazione delle Nazioni Unite per l'Alimentazione e l'Agricoltura is an intern ...

(FAO) of the

United Nations The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization whose stated purposes are to maintain international peace and international security, security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation, and be ...

, the

International Atomic Energy Agency The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is an intergovernmental organization that seeks to promote the peaceful use of nuclear energy and to inhibit its use for any military purpose, including nuclear weapons. It was established in 1957 ...

(IAEA) and the Dutch Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries.

Aims

The organisation's aim was to address food loss and

food safety Food safety (or food hygiene) is used as a scientific method/discipline describing handling, preparation, and storage of food in ways that prevent food-borne illness. The occurrence of two or more cases of a similar illness resulting from t ...

in developing countries by speeding up the practical introduction of the

food irradiation Food irradiation is the process of exposing food and food packaging to ionizing radiation, such as from gamma rays, x-rays, or electron beams. Food irradiation improves food safety and extends product shelf life (preservation) by effectively ...

process. They achieved this by training initiatives, research and feasibility studies. It was founded in 1978 and was operational until 1990, and during those twelve years over four hundred key personnel from over fifty countries were trained in aspects of food irradiation, making a significant contribution to the development and use of the radiation process. The Facility also co-ordinated research into the technology, economics and implementation of food irradiation, assisted in the assessment of the feasibility of using radiation to preserve foodstuffs, and evaluated trial shipments of irradiated material.

Facilities

The Facility had a pilot plant with a

cobalt-60 Cobalt-60 (60Co) is a synthetic radioactive isotope of cobalt with a half-life of 5.2713 years. It is produced artificially in nuclear reactors. Deliberate industrial production depends on neutron activation of bulk samples of the monoisoto ...

source whose activity was , which was stored underwater. Drums or boxes containing products were placed on rotating tables or

conveyor belt A conveyor belt is the carrying medium of a belt conveyor system (often shortened to belt conveyor). A belt conveyor system is one of many types of conveyor systems. A belt conveyor system consists of two or more pulleys (sometimes referred to ...

s, and irradiation took place by raising the source out of the pool.

Details

During IFFIT's first five years of operation, 109 scientists from 40 countries attended six training courses, five of them being general training courses on food irradiation and the sixth being a specialised course on public health aspects. IFFIT also evaluated shipments of irradiated

mangoes A mango is an edible stone fruit produced by the tropical tree ''Mangifera indica''. It is believed to have originated in the region between northwestern Myanmar, Bangladesh, and northeastern India. ''M. indica'' has been cultivated in South a ...

spices A spice is a seed, fruit, root, Bark (botany), bark, or other plant substance primarily used for flavoring or coloring food. Spices are distinguished from herbs, which are the leaves, flowers, or stems of plants used for flavoring or as a garni ...

avocado The avocado (''Persea americana'') is a medium-sized, evergreen tree in the laurel family (Lauraceae). It is native to the Americas and was first domesticated by Mesoamerican tribes more than 5,000 years ago. Then as now it was prized for i ...

shrimp Shrimp are crustaceans (a form of shellfish) with elongated bodies and a primarily swimming mode of locomotion – most commonly Caridea and Dendrobranchiata of the decapod order, although some crustaceans outside of this order are refer ...

onions An onion (''Allium cepa'' L., from Latin ''cepa'' meaning "onion"), also known as the bulb onion or common onion, is a vegetable that is the most widely cultivated species of the genus ''Allium''. The shallot is a botanical variety of the onion ...

and

garlic Garlic (''Allium sativum'') is a species of bulbous flowering plant in the genus ''Allium''. Its close relatives include the onion, shallot, leek, chive, Allium fistulosum, Welsh onion and Allium chinense, Chinese onion. It is native to South A ...

, and produced 46 reports. The publications are available on

WorldCat WorldCat is a union catalog that itemizes the collections of tens of thousands of institutions (mostly libraries), in many countries, that are current or past members of the OCLC global cooperative. It is operated by OCLC, Inc. Many of the OCL ...

. One trainee noted that Professor D. A. A. Mossel (1918–2004) assisted with the training courses with what he described as "remarkably suggestive lectures and his phenomenal foreign language abilities". From 1988 onwards,

Ari Brynjolfsson Ari Brynjolfsson (1926 – 2013; Icelandic spelling Brynjólfsson) was an Icelandic-American physicist known for his work in America on food irradiation and for the development of radiation facilities. Background Ari Brynjolfsson was born in ...

was director of IFFIT.

References

{{reflist, 30em, refs= {{cite journal, journal=Trends in Food Science & Technology, pages=121–126, volume=22, year=2011, title=History and future of food irradiation, author=József Farkas and Csilla Mohácsi-Farkas, publisher=Elsevier, url=http://www.oeti.hu/download.php?fid=914, doi=10.1016/j.tifs.2010.04.002, issue=2–3 {{cite book, author=Grahame W. Gould, title=New Methods of Food Preservation, url=https://books.google.com/books?id=6a_dbGRoiWIC&pg=PA106, date=31 December 1995, publisher=Springer, isbn=978-0-8342-1341-8, pages=106–107 {{cite book, author=G. Gould, title=Food Irradiation: A Reference Guide, url=https://books.google.com/books?id=FpIpsqs7CRUC&pg=PA169, date=1 January 1996, publisher=Woodhead Publishing, isbn=978-1-85573-359-6, page=169 {{cite journal, journal=IAEA Bulletin, volume=26, issue=2, url=http://www.iaea.org/Publications/Magazines/Bulletin/Bull262/26205781721.pdf, title=Food irradiation makes progress, author=J. van Kooij, year=1984, pages=17–21, accessdate=15 December 2023, archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131212045310/https://www.iaea.org/Publications/Magazines/Bulletin/Bull262/26205781721.pdf, archive-date=12 December 2013 {{cite web, url=http://krex.k-state.edu/dspace/bitstream/handle/2097/592/AmitKumar2008.pdf?sequence=1, title=Food Irradiation and Development of an Alternative Method for the Detection of 2-alkylcyclobutanone, author=Amit Kumar, date=2 April 2008, accessdate=6 December 2013 {{cite web, url=http://www.laka.org/info/publicaties/ital/1.html, title=Laka publikaties: ITAL 1-geschiedenis, publisher=laka.org, date=15 September 2006, accessdate=8 December 2013 {{cite journal, journal=Radiation Physics and Chemistry, volume=25, issue=1–3, title=Five years' experience of the international facility for food irradiation technology, author=J. Farkas, year=1977, bibcode=1985RaPC...25..227F, pages=227–231, doi=10.1016/0146-5724(85)90268-7 {{cite news, newspaper=Tíminn, page=6, issue=271, title=Ari Brynjólfsson heiðraður af bandarískum kjarnorkuvísindamönnum: Tallinn fremstur í geislarannsóknum, url= http://timarit.is/view_page_init.jsp?issId=280402&pageId=4050651&lang=is&q=Ari%20Brynjólfsson, date=25 November 1988, accessdate=2 December 2013 {{cite web, url=http://www.worldcat.org/search?q=se%3A%22IFFIT+report%22&fq=&dblist=638&qt=sort&se=yr&sd=asc&qt=sort_yr_asc, title=Search Results, work=WorldCat, accessdate=10 December 2013

External links

List of publications produced by the International Facility for Food Irradiation Technology
Food preservation International organizations based in Europe Radiation Wageningen Agriculture in the Netherlands