Foodborne illness is a significant public health problem in America. The United States Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) launched a national Food Thermometer Education Campaign (FTEC) to educate the public to use food thermometers more regularly. FSIS applied social marketing processes to a portion of its FTEC to identify and move a specific target pop...

Current applications of machine vision in agriculture are briefly reviewed. The requirements and recent developments of hardware and software for machine vision systems are discussed, with emphases on multispectral and hyperspectral imaging for modern food inspection. Examples of applications for detection of disease, defects, and contamination on poultry carcasses and apples are also given. Fu...

Meat inspection of finisher pigs is gradually moving from traditional inspection involving palpation and incision to a more visual inspection. However, what do we miss if we no longer palpate and incise? This is addressed in this paper which focuses specifically on palpation of the lungs and the liver. A risk assessment following international guidelines was undertaken. The assessment shows tha...

Spectral analysis is widely used for moisture determination in food. However, some types of food being composed of a number of different chemical constituents pose problems for accurate measurement of moisture due to shifts of peak spectral response and changes in peak spectral responses in the absorption bands. We investigate specific changes in spectral response to point out the spectral band...

X-ray testing has been developed for inspection of materials or objects, where the aim is to analyze –nondestructively– those inner parts that are undetectable to the naked eye. Thus, Xray testing is used to determine if a test object deviates from a given set of specifications. Typical applications are inspection of automotive parts, quality control of welds, screening of baggage, analysis of ...

The overall goal of this paper is to develop a cost effective portable multispectral imaging instrument that inspectors or plant personnel can use for quality control. Food safety and quality in food industry, especially small plant is ongoing problem. Identification and separation of contaminated food is very important to protect the consumer from a potential source of food poisoning. The curr...