Food Science and Technology in Australia

A review of research since 1900

JR Vickery

• Publisher: CSIRO PUBLISHING
• Year: 1990
• Print ISBN: 9780643050501
• eBook ISBN: 9780643105706
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

The main purpose of this book is to give food technologists in industry and students in training a comprehensive review of research findings by Australian workers in government, university and industrial laboratories from 1900 to 1990.

To further its aims as a reference book, detailed bibliographies of some 1400 research papers have been compiled particularly for the period prior to access of references through databases.

Another aim was to draw attention to the many contributions which brought international recognition to their authors; particularly those who did not have the advantage s of modern separation, analytical and computational techniques.

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

While these notes are concerned with Australian developments in the period 1900-88, reference is made to parallel developments in other countries because of their influence on Australian technology and industrial practices, and because Australia is a comparatively late starter in research in food science and technology.

Prior to 1900, systematic research by trained investigators was limited to food chemists working mainly in Germany and the USA. There were also extensive, empirical engineeering studies on food processing and preservation equipment in many countries, including Australia.

Systematic studies of the chemical, physical and biological nature of foods and the changes they undergo when processed, stored, packaged and transported are very much part of the rise of general technology in the twentieth century. Early work occurred in Germany and the USA quickly followed by the United Kingdom, Canada, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Holland and Denmark.

So far as Australia was concerned, early research work arose mainly from problems in our export trade in those items which contributed heavily to our export income – meat, milk products and fruits. In this connection the work of the Meat Freezing Committee of the Australian National Research Council (an ANZAAS committee) was notable.

In Britain, World War I problems of feeding the people led to the founding of the Food Investigation Board in 1917 and to its subsequent expansion in research work at the Low Temperature Research Station, Cambridge (meat, eggs and fruit), Torry Research Station, Aberdeen (fish) and Ditton Research Station, Kent (fruit). Subsequently, world trade difficulties led to the formation of the Empire Marketing Board and its release of funds for food research not only in Britain but in the several Dominions. These were frequently conducted on a cooperative basis between Britain and the Dominions, and many concerned problems of shipboard refrigerated transport. Such cooperation continued up the outbreak of World War II and for some years after.

 

References

Historical Review. (1929). Index to Literature of Food Investigation 1:1.

Walker, G.J. (1981). History of food preservation. CSIRO Division of Food Research, Information Service. Sheet No. 17-2.

Bastian,J.M. (1976). Fifty years of food research, Part 1. CSIRO Food Research Q. 36:3.

CHAPTER 2

The Rise of Research Work on Food Science and Technology

As indicated in the first reference at the end of Chapter 1, modern food research may be said to have followed rapidly on the heels, and to have been dependent on, the rise of biochemical, nutritional and engineering sciences early in the twentieth century. Pioneers in ths field include Plank, Kallert, Reuter, von Fürth (Germany); Richardson, Scherubel, Hoagland, Hepburn, Pennington (USA); Ewing, Griffiths (UK).

Following the work of these pioneers, highly productive food research centres were established in a number of places throughout the world in the period 1918-39. These included the British laboratories under the control of the Food Investigation Board; the Regional Research Laboratories of the US Department of Agriculture, the US Agricultural Experiment Stations of the “Land-Grant” colleges, and the various meat research laboratories mainly centred in Chicago; the laboratories of the Canadian National Research Council, Ottawa, the laboratories of the Canada Department of Agriculture and the eastern and western research stations of the Canadian Fisheries Research Board; the Cape Town, South Africa, laboratories of the Perishable Fruit Export Control Board; the Central Food Technological Research Laboratories, Mysore, India; the Hawkes’ Bay and Nelson fruit storage research laboratories of the New Zealand Department of Scientific and Industrial Research.

In Australia, early work was conducted or sponsored in the period 1918 to 1927 by the Australian National Research Council (ANRC), the Advisory Council of Science and Industry, it’s successor the Institute of Science and Industry and by the Victorian Department of Agriculture. With the foundation, by the Commonwealth Government in 1926, of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), the sponsored work extended to the freezing of meat, the transport and ripening of bananas and the storage of citrus fruits. CSIR also worked toward the establishment of its own research group, which became a reality in 1931 with the formation of the Section of Food Preservation with a meat research laboratory in Brisbane and a fruit storage laboratory in Melbourne operated in cooperation with the Victorian Department of Agriculture. In 1940, the Section became the CSIR Division of Food Preservation.

In the period from 1926 to the present, the history of food research in Australia is largely that of government-financed laboratories: CSIRO (CSIR) Divisions of Food Research and Plant Industry, the departments of agriculture of Victoria, New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia and Western Australia. Several research laboratories of food companies, notably Kraft Ltd and the Colonial Sugar Refining Co., and subsequently the post-graduate schools of the University of NSW, Hawkesbury Agricultural College and the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology made valuable contributions.

On the organisational side, the standards of food technology practised in Australia were materially advanced by the help to the wartime industry given by Commonwealth Food Control, 1939-45, and through the latter by the American advisers to the US Army in Australia – notably Joslyn, Fellers, Powers and Cobb.

In the years after 1945, perhaps even more important were the steadily rising standards of technology induced by three factors: (a) The establishment and expansion of professional courses in food science and technology at the University of NSW, Hawkesbury Agricultural College, the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology and the Queensland Agricultural College, complemented by courses for technicians at Sydney Technical College, and the Moorabbin and Shepparton Technical Colleges (Victoria). (b) The establishment of the Australian branches of the (American) Institute of Food Technology in 1950 and their absorption, in 1967, into the Australian Institute of Food Science and Technology. The establishment, too, in 1946-50, of food technology associations in each state and their federal body, CAFTA, greatly helped the transfer of research results to industry. (c) The introduction of more uniform and better food regulations in each state, through the work of the National Health and Medical Research Council, in conjunction with CAFTA and the state departments of health.

CHAPTER 3

Meat

In Europe and America, early research work which formed the basis for subsequent advances is given in the references, Latimer (1899) to Simpson and MacLeod (1926) and Moran (1926), Hirsch (1927), Griffiths and Awbery (1927), and Davenport et al. (1928) to Awbery and Griffiths (1933).

In the period 1890-1910, Argentina established a large and successful export trade in chilled beef with Britain and several European countries. Chilled beef not only was immediately available for retail sale soon after its importation (Australian frozen beef quarters had to be thawed before retail sale), but its superior appearance and freedom from “drip” gave the Argentine product a considerable price advantage over Australian beef. An average voyage period of 55-56 days was too long to allow exports of Australian chilled beef without the onset of serious microbial spoilage. In the period 1900-55, a major part of Australian investigations was therefore concerned with the nature of the changes in beef muscle following the onset of freezing; modifications to the freezing and thawing processes which might avoid loss of drip and improve appearance; and various ways of retarding the growth of micro-organisms and thus permit the safe export of chilled beef.

In the early part of the twentieth century, three empirical methods were tested.

Linley Process This method, of South American origin (Anon, 1910) required the chilled meat to be subjected to formaldehyde vapour for one hour each day during storage on land and sea, in conjunction, of course, with holding at -1°C to -1.5°C. Successful shipments totalling over 6000 beef quarters were made from Queensland to the UK in the period 1909-11. Further work ceased when the British government decided that the use of formaldehyde for the control of micro-organisms on meat was unacceptable because of its risks to the health of consumers.

Bullot Process This patented method proposed by Louis Bullot (CSIR, Circ. 1927), a well-known figure in the New South Wales meat industry, relied for its preservative effect on exposure of meat to the products of combustion of a complex mixture consisting principally of sulphur, potassium nitrate, wattle bark and charcoal. After extensive tests a committee of ANRC reported that it could not recommend the Bullot process as likely to be of value in Australian meat exports to Europe, although it may have some value for meat exported to some tropical countries.

It is noteworthy that the committee’s investigator was Mr W.A. Empey, a veterinary research scientist, who subsequently played a major part in CSIR and CSIRO research work on meat and fish preservation.

Perfect Process In the period prior to about 1935, Argentine chilled beef was shipped in ‘tween and orlop decks, about 205 cm to 214 cm high, with the quarters tightly packed and suspended from rails inserted in the deck-head. A “packing” of 2.81 to 3.1 cubic metres per tonne was usually aimed at. The temperature of the meat, loaded at -1°C, was maintained at -0.8°C to -1.2°C by massive arrays of pipes on the deck-head and sides, and through which brine at -2.5°C to -4°C circulated. No forced air circulation was provided. For a voyage period of 21-23 days, this system usually sufficed to keep the meat comparatively free from microbial spoilage.

An Australian engineer, Perfect, argued that the limited storage life of South American chilled beef (probably about 27-30 days) was due to high humidity and lack of air circulation between the quarters. He designed and, strangely, was granted a patent for a system of air circulation and humidity control wherein the cooling was done in an external brine-coil battery and air blown into cargo spaces at the deck-head and extracted at the bulk-heads. There was, in fact, no conscious control of relative humidity but a considerable air flow occurred through the meat. It was a system of refrigeration rather similar to those prevailing in some Australian cool stores for meat and fruit.

In the period 1925-27 three “Perfect” process shipments were made from Australia to the UK. Moderate success was attained. Moderate to minor trimming of the meat was necessary to eliminate areas where microbial spoilage (bacterial and mould) had occurred. I was a member of a small team which assessed the third shipment. Although microbial spoilage was not excessive, there was considerable desiccation which greatly affected the appearance of the quarters. While the “Perfect” beef quarters sold at a premium over comparable frozen meat, the trimming losses and desiccation made the margin very small.

Meat Investigations 1924-30

Research studies conducted under the auspices of the Meat Freezing Committee of ANRC were located at the Biochemistry Department, Melbourne University, under the direction of Associate Professor W.J. Young. The first were conducted by Cook and Vickery (Cook et al._t 1926 ) and were concerned with the effects of the rate of freezing of beef on the amounts of “drip” produced during thawing. In general, the faster the freezing the smaller was the “drip”. When CSIR was founded in 1926, these investigations were financed by the new body, the investigators being W.J. Young and W.A. Empey. The latter (Empey, 1933) made a major contribution in showing that the amount of “drip” was dependent not only on freezing rates but also on the level of pH, post-mortem, in the beef muscle, the amount of “drip” decreasing with an increase of pH in the range 5.4 to 6.8.

Chilled Beef held in 10 per cent Carbon Dioxide

The story of the development and successful application of this technique devised by Moran et al. (1932) ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• 1. Introduction
• 2. The Rise of Research Work on Food Science and Technology
• 3. Meat
• 4. Fish and Other Marine Foods
• 5. Eggs
• 6. Cereals
• 7. Fresh Fruit and related Post-Harvest Physiology
• 8. Tomatoes
• 9. Potatoes
• 10. Food Microbiology
• 11. Food Chemistry – Non-Enzymic Browning
• 12. Food Chemistry – Flavours
• 13. Food Chemistry – Taints
• 14. Food Chemistry – General
• 15. The Composition of Australian Foods
• 16. Canning Technology
• 17. Frozen Fruits and Vegetables
• 18. Drying of Fruit
• 19. Dehydrated Vegetables
• 20. Irradiation of Foods
• 21. Fruit Juices
• 22. Miscellaneous Foods
• 23. The Evaluation of Flavours and the Perception of Odours
• 24. Packaging
• 25. Food Engineering and Equipment
• 26. Transport by Ship
• 27. Land Transport
• Appendix