1. Dr. Keener's Ionizing Ozone Machine

Scientists fingered spinach as the villain in the September to October 2006 outbreak of Escherichia coli, which sickened 205 and killed three....[More]

1. Dr. Keener's Ionizing Ozone Machine

Scientists fingered spinach as the villain in the September to October 2006 outbreak of Escherichia coli, which sickened 205 and killed three. Now Purdue University's Kevin Keener might have a way to rid microbial infections from the leafy green: plasma.

Keener's device uses high-voltage coils to create a room-temperature plasma field inside a food bag, which ionizes the air inside and creates ozone. Exposure to the gas kills microbes after a few minutes, and it dissipates within 24 hours, Keener says. His lab model cost about $1,500 to build, though he says an industrial-size version could fall more in the $15,000 range.

He says the treatment doesn't leave the food smelling funny, and the slight increase in temperature doesn't cook it. Rather, the hitch thus far is discoloration—ozone also kills chlorophyll—so if there's a cut that allows the gas inside the plant it can partially bleach it.  [Less] [Link to this slide]

2. Microfluid Chip for Pathogen-Tester

One of the biggest food safety challenges of the modern economy, Cornell University's Carl Batt says, is that our food gets shipped around so much....[More]

2. Microfluid Chip for Pathogen-Tester

One of the biggest food safety challenges of the modern economy, Cornell University's Carl Batt says, is that our food gets shipped around so much. For the past decade, his lab has been working to downsize pathogen-detecting technology into something just as mobile as our food supply.

Batt's machine extracts a liquified sample of the food and uses a microfluid analysis chip to do a DNA-based scan for the pathogen in question (right now, it's salmonella). The current machine is the size of a suitcase, he says, but the device keeps shrinking as the nanotechnology to move the fluids advances. In the photo, student Sushmitha Krishnan holds the chip for an even smaller model. "People want this tricorder, Star Trek kind of stuff," he says.

So will a tricorder soon be scanning your food for salmonella? Don't count on it. Batt says few of the second-generation, briefcase-size machines are even out there yet. Despite occasional food scares, he says, the market for pathogen-hunting hasn't caught up to the technology yet—Batt says the tester probably costs between $30,000 and $50,000 right now.  [Less] [Link to this slide]

3. Blogging... And Spying on You

Inspired in part by the recent move of Butterball's call-in Turkey Talk-Line to the Web and health blogs like WebMD, Kansas State University food scientist Doug Powell decided new media was the way to keep people informed about how to keep up on food safety....[More]

3. Blogging... And Spying on You

Inspired in part by the recent move of Butterball's call-in Turkey Talk-Line to the Web and health blogs like WebMD, Kansas State University food scientist Doug Powell decided new media was the way to keep people informed about how to keep up on food safety. So he started Barfblog. This compendium of the disgusting stays up-to-date on food scares and bloggers' own stories when they didn't do so well keeping their own food disease-free.

Powell also wanted to see whether people are learning to follow food safety instructions, so he gathered 40 test subjects—half adults, half adolescents—in a model kitchen with food that's been implicated in disease outbreaks, like chicken thighs. Participants did okay—73 percent washed their hands before cooking, but very few checked their chicken with a internal thermometer when they were done.

Anyway, Powell's not alone as media advocate for food safety. If you need a little silly in your day, check out University of California, Davis, professor Carl Winter's food safety song parodies, like "Who Left the Food Out?" and "50 Ways to Eat Your Oysters."  [Less] [Link to this slide]

4. Finding Cracked Eggs

Cracks in eggs aren't simply an inconvenience for shoppers, they're also a open door for pathogens to enter. Human inspectors do a decent job at crack detection, catching about 86 percent, according to the U.S....[More]

4. Finding Cracked Eggs

Cracks in eggs aren't simply an inconvenience for shoppers, they're also a open door for pathogens to enter. Human inspectors do a decent job at crack detection, catching about 86 percent, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. But some cracks are too tiny to be seen, and expand later during shipping and sitting in the store. To solve the egg problem, scientists at the USDA's Agricultural Research Service turned to a vacuum.

Putting a batch of eggs into a vacuum creates negative pressure—the insides of the egg want to get out. If the shell is intact, no problem. But if it contains microcracks, the pressure ruptures them further and makes them more visible to inspectors. In the testing system, each egg gets its own LED light, according to project agricultural engineer Kurt Lawrence, and the researchers use a monochrome camera to take before-and-after photos to notice cracks that expand in the vacuum.

Lawrence says the team has yet to develop a commercial model, but tests of the system showed it was 99.4 percent effective at finding cracks.  [Less] [Link to this slide]

5. More Resistant Chickens, Fewer Outbreaks

Rather than rooting out salmonella from chickens entering the food supply, Susan Lamont of Iowa State University is trying to figure out how to make chickens themselves more resistant to the pathogen....[More]

5. More Resistant Chickens, Fewer Outbreaks

Rather than rooting out salmonella from chickens entering the food supply, Susan Lamont of Iowa State University is trying to figure out how to make chickens themselves more resistant to the pathogen. For the last eight years her lab has tried to uncover the genetic reasons why some chickens have more resistance to pathogens than others do.

For example, scientists had known for years that some chickens have greater salmonella-resistance, Lamont says. Genetic studies picked up steam five years ago, when the chicken became the first farm species to have its genome sequenced. Since then, Lamont's been breeding chickens with promising biological markers—groups of genes that seem to correlate with salmonella resistance—to produce generations of more resistant chickens. "We can see what is changing over time," she says.

Poultry companies are doing the same thing, she says, but because the results aren't patented, they're loath to let loose any trade secrets that would likely push research along even faster.  [Less] [Link to this slide]