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Trying to Improve Food Safety With a Camera

06 June 2011

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Photo: USDA/ Peggy Greb

Biophysicist Moon Kim and the imaging system

This is the VOA Special English Agriculture

Report.

TO DOWNLOAD the
MP3 of this story, click
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Europe's deadly outbreak of a rare form of E. coli bacteria has brought new
attention to food safety issues. One of the problems when people get sick
from food is that the simplest question is often difficult or even impossible to
answer. Just what did the people eat that made them sick?
Of course, one way to avoid these medical mysteries is to keep dangerous
organisms out of the food supply. This is easier said than done, but scientists
keep looking for new ways.
Scientists in the United States have developed an experimental system that
uses a high-tech optical scanner. The inspection system is meant for packing
houses where produce is sorted for market.
The system is designed to identify the presence of contaminants like soil or
animal waste on fresh produce. These can be sources of Escherichia coli,
better known as E. coli. E. coli bacteria naturally live in the intestines of
humans and many animals. Most kinds of E. coli are harmless but some can
make people sick.
The new scanner can also show damage and imperfections that might make
the produce unappealing to shoppers.
Scientists designed the system at a Department of Agriculture research center
in Beltsville, Maryland. Moon Kim of the Agricultural Research Service led the
team.
MOON KIM: "We were requested, we were asked, to develop a method to

detect contamination in produce. So we started with the apple as the model

sample."
The scanner uses a high-speed camera placed over the conveyer belt that
moves the produce along. As the apples move along the belt, the scanner
captures images of each piece of fruit.
The system is equipped with an ultraviolet lamp and a halogen lamp that
produces near-infrared light. A spectrograph device can use the near-infrared
light bouncing off an apple to show evidence of damage. The ultraviolet light
can show contaminants.
Moon Kim says the team hopes the system will be available before long.
MOON KIM: "We are targeting for development in commercial plants for the
next several years."
The scanner can direct a sorting machine to separate the bad apples from the
good ones. The system is currently able to show the surface of only half the
apple as it speeds by. The inventers hope to improve the process so it can
show the whole surface.
And thats the VOA Special English Agriculture Report, written by Jerilyn
Watson. You can watch captioned videos of our reports at the VOA Learning
English channel on YouTube. Im Bob Doughty.
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Comments

COMMENTS (39)
06-06-2011 Jean

Amazing machine! I have a belief that people get sick mostly because of what
they have eaten in their daily lives. Food which infected by E. coli bacteria
might make some people uncomfortable immediately. A great number of
people who suffer from chronic diseases like high blood pressure, diabetes
etc. have bad habits for example used to having too much sugar or salt in
their diets. So we should pay more attention to what we eat.

06-06-2011 Martin (Vietnam)

That is a good news. Nowadays, people must be face to face with many
diseases from unsafe food. Hope that, with developing of scientific, people
have strong life and long aged.

07-06-2011 Ken (Taiwan)

It's very interesting. The method just uses the UV and near-IR to detect the
comtamination on the surface of apples. I think the method could apply for the
food safety management and ensure the quality.

07-06-2011 Nguyen Thach (Vietnam)

This is good instrument for process food before using. But how much is it ?
and the family in developing country can buy one or not?

07-06-2011 Shelia (Taiwan)

There is now Food Safety issue in Taiwan. Every day it is being reported a lot
of relative news on TV here. I am so worried about this situation is being out
of control, and could be developed to hurt people's health permanently.

Thanks VOA for your report.

07-06-2011 Hasan (Turkey)

This dangerous E. Coli may infect all the food products. Therefore, this
problem is very important for humans' healt. We would like Kim Moon to thank
for his and co-workers' efforts.

07-06-2011 Jihee Jeong (S.Korea)

good information

07-06-2011 Adam Duong (vietnam)

That is great news to people all of the world. They are waiting to find out the
good way to stop spreading of the new virus, E.coli. Some crisises later are
breakout of new viruses which are more dangerous for human.

07-06-2011 Donny (Indonesian)

Thats great topic

07-06-2011 drac (China)

must it put the good and bad fruits together for checking? anyway a good
reference.

07-06-2011 raul (china)

During the development of technology and economy,there are many issues

about food safety emerged.Why did it happened?

07-06-2011 phancuong (vietnam)

Nowadays, safe foods has become an important issue. We aren't sure

whether foods which we eat daily are safe or not. Recently, a rare form of
E.coli is found in European and killed and injured several hundreds people in
Germany Sweeden and other countries. Therefore, the development of
science is very important to against bacteria which has trying to adapt to new
medicines or science therapies. And i hope this invention of American
scientists is used over the wolrd. Thanks VOA.

07-06-2011 dina ahmad (dina.ahmad17@yahoo.com)

thank you

07-06-2011 J.u.l.i.a.n.a (Brazil)

I take much care with what I eat or I handle. Wash hands and raw vegetables
carefully. More and more diseases are appearing to get us sick. Teach
children to avoid put dirty hands in their mouth and wash all. I am worried
about how many resistent bacterias are spreading fastly around the world.

07-06-2011 young (taiwan)

Can I use this machine to checkup myself? Just curious...

07-06-2011 Ananao (Bolivia)

Thanks VOA

07-06-2011 O.D (Cambodia)

Good

07-06-2011 wt (china)

the food issue is aways a problem in any area of the world.what we can do is
to improve the technology of angricalture

08-06-2011 hau (vietnam)

i think this is a helpful invention.but it is difficult for our country to have it.i
hope it'll appear in my country on a near day.

08-06-2011 yangmay

food safty is a very important issue in these days.I have a bad digestive
system and I'm always suffered from the food that has problem.The food may
be affected by the ?yes,E coli.

08-06-2011 David Tran (Vietnam)

Great!

08-06-2011 yunxh (china)

everybody should do our best to control the disease spread.

08-06-2011 sebahattin (Turkey)

this subject is very important, healty of human

08-06-2011 Mahhony (Turkey)

What a news. very good machine. I beleive they will achive to invent that
machine.

08-06-2011 Meredith (China)

Science technology makes life better .

09-06-2011 ChungMoonHee (Korea)

This is great news. We ate a lot of food which may be involved ecoli
bacterias, but we can not recognize them by our eyes. With this invention
people can eliminate many dangerous disease resulted from not clean food.

09-06-2011 Grace (China)

Food healthy is becoming a hot and serious topic today, hopefully that system
will take effect in health inspection.

09-06-2011 shwezin (myanmar)

great machine and good job. we really need that kind of machine in our
country

09-06-2011 Minh (Vietnam)

The world wide science is now developing rapidly. Thanks scientists

09-06-2011 Fiona

Food safety is very important issue for people, we are very grateful to this
teams, looking forward to this scanner apply to the practical as quickly as
possible.

09-06-2011 viet anh (viet nam)

people in viet nam seem to immunize with E.coli , cause that 60-70% of street
dishes contain this bacterial which we enjoy everday, no need to waste money
on this machine lol.

09-06-2011 zhang (china)

We have to admit that the food safety issues have been a hot topic and it is
time to come up with the effective solutions to solve the problem because of
the food safety .this is easier said than done . we should take part in the
search which is the key to the food safety .whether it will pay off more or not
,we should insist on doing it .it has spare too little time to ignore the issules .

09-06-2011 somiaz (Morocco)

http://machahir123.blogspot.com/

10-06-2011 ken (china)

In our country,most kinds of food are not safe,we have lose confidence,what
we can eat?Government is takeing action to resolve these issues at this
monmnet.Hope they can do good job.

10-06-2011 indra (indonesia)

The great instrument to keep ourselves from something wrong in food...

10-06-2011 helen (China)

rapid development always come from combining science with commerce

10-06-2011 lee lee (Vietnam)

im worry, my E is not good, so i can understand it.hix help me. oh when i

enter this web i see it's great!

10-06-2011 olia (china)

cool method

10-06-2011 Kim (s.Korea)

It's very interesting news!

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