Food Science and Technology in Australia: A review of research since 1900

By JR Vickery

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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: CSIRO PUBLISHING
• Release date: Jun 1, 1990
• ISBN: 9780643105706

Book preview

FOOD SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY IN AUSTRALIA

a review of research since 1900

FOOD SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY IN AUSTRALIA

a review of research since 1900

J. R. Vickery

Formerly Honorary Senior Research Fellow, CSIRO Division of Food Research (now Food Processing)

© CSIRO Australia 1990

National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication Entry

Vicker, J.R. (James Richard), 1902-

Food Science and Technology in Australia.

Bibliography.

ISBN 0 643 05050 7.

1. Food - Research - Australia - History. 2. Food industry and trade - Research - Australia - History. I. CSIRO. II. Title.

664.0072094

The Publication of this book has been supported by the CSIRO Food Research Laboratory, North Ryde, New South Wales, the Council of Australian Food Technology Associations and the Australian Institute of Food Science and Technology Ltd.

Managing editor: Kevin Jeans, CSIRO Editorial Services Section

Copy editor: Alex Gray

Book design and production management by CSIRO Print Advisory Service, Melbourne

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

Preface

In 1985,1 was asked by Dr K.T.H. Farrer, FTS, to write some notes on the development of food technology to help him prepare a section for a book, Technology in Australia, 1788-1988, being issued by the Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering for publication in Australia’s Bicentennial Year.

After several requests to publish these notes were received, I realised that they did not adequately cover the work of some research laboratories and some phases of food research. The notes have been gready expanded and include summaries of papers published up to December 1987. The science and technology of milk and milk products, except flavours and off-flavours, have been excluded partly because I am not well acquainted with this field but mainly because they have been adequately covered in Dr Farrer’s section of the Academy’s publication.

This review has been prepared mainly to help food technologists in industry, and teachers, research and senior students in tertiary schools of food science and technology. The lists of references have been made as comprehensive as possible, particularly for the earlier decades of this century. This may be a reminder to some research workers and students disinclined to search the literature in the period before accessibility through computers, that is, prior to about 1968. They may realise that Australian research work of top world standard was published prior to data banks of abstracts. I refer particularly to that of Dr W. J. Scott and his colleagues on the control of microbial growth by adjustment of water activity, to that of Dr T. M. Reynolds and her colleagues on the chemistry of the Maillard reaction in food, to the pioneering work of E.W. Hicks on the mathematical analysis of heat sterlisation, and to that of Sir Rutherford Robertson and his colleagues on the post-harvest physiology of many fruits and vegetables.

While an effort has been made to cover all worthy, published work, the author tenders an apology to those research workers whose publications may have been overlooked.

Acknowledgements

The substantial financial help given by the Council of Australian Food Technology Associations, by the Australian Institute of Food Science and Technology Limited, and by two anonymous donors to facilitate the book’s publication is gratefully acknowledged.

My thanks are due to various colleagues who checked those chapters in which they were expert: Dr Barrie McGlasson, post-harvest physiology; Dr Frank Whitfield, flavours and taints; Dr Don Casimir, food engineering and equipment; Drs David Laing and Robert McBride, sensory perception and testing; Mr RE. Marston, cereals; Mr J.J. Macfarlane, meat research and food irradiation.

I also wish to thank Dr Douglas Graham, Head of Laboratory, CSIRO Food Research Laboratory, North Ryde, for granting me facilities for the preparation and production of the manuscript; to Mrs Lyn Keen, Word Processing Office of the Laboratory for her patient and accurate typing and correction of the manuscript; to Mr Will Rushton, Divisional Photographer and Mr Stewart Haege, Bread Research Institute, for preparing many photographs.

To my wife, Meron, I am also very grateful for continued patience and encouragement during the long preparation of the manuscript.

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) at the Low Temperature Research Station, Cambridge, is given in Fifty Years of Food Research by Bastian, McBean and Smith (1979, 1-61).

While it was fairly certain that the use of 10 per cent carbon dioxide in the shipboard storage spaces would avoid appreciable microbial attack on the beef for voyage periods up to about 42 days, it was by no means certain that spoilage could be avoided during the more usual voyage periods of 45-60 days. The investigations in the CSIR Meat Research Laboratory by Empey, Scott and Vickery were, therefore, aimed chiefly at devising suitable hygienic techniques at all stages from animal holding pens through slaughter, dressing, cooling and storage, in order to reduce microbial contamination and growth to negligible proportions (Empey and Scott, 1939; Scott and Vickery, 1939).

A few points should be noted:

While many successful shipments may have been made without the elaborate hygiene precautions recommended by CSIR, the margin of safety was small and severe microbial spoilage may have occurred if delays took place.

Although exports reached only 29,000 tons per year (about a quarter of total beef shipments), the extra financial returns gave the beef industry new hope after many years of depressed prices. The chilled beef trade led to extensive increases in investments in the pastoral industry.

The first shipment of chilled meat using the C02 process took place on mv Port Fairy from Sydney in 1933 and was organised by F.J. Walker Ltd with quarters from the company’s Aberdeen meat works. While the shipment was successful, excessive amounts of C02 were used because of faulty gas-tight construction on shipboard and microbial spoilage was beginning by the time of unloading in London. This shipment was made before CSIR had obtained sufficient research results to be able confidently to define the requirements for safe transport. The first CSIR supervised shipment was on mv Idomeneus in February 1934 (Empey et al., 1934).

Except for several isolated shipments after World War II, the export of chilled quarters was not resumed, largely because the high cost of fitting-up gas-tight cargo spaces resulted in high freight rates, which greatly decreased the profit margin.

Frozen Meat Studies

In 1949, an agreement was reached between CSIRO Meat Research Laboratories, the Low Temperature Research Station, Cambridge, and the New Zealand Department of Scientific and Industrial Research for joint research studies on pre- and post-mortem effects on the quality (including the amount of drip) of frozen and thawed beef. It was based on the premise that, in the long term, frozen meat for the export trade was preferable to chilled because of its greatly superior keeping quality. Because of its better facilities, most investigations were conducted at the CSIRO Cannon Hill laboratory where A. Howard (CSIRO) and R.A. Lawrie (now Professor Lawrie) of the Food Investigation Board led a joint Australian-British team for a period