FOOD QUALITY & SAFETY

The safety of our Nation’s food supply is an issue faced by each individual at every meal. Despite valiant efforts by USDA inspectors, diseases such as E. coli and Salmonella, which cannot be seen by the human eye, can end up on the store shelf and ultimately on your dinner plate. One way to help inspectors in their quest to ensure the wholesomeness of the Nation’s food supply is to use automated machine vision to spot diseases and unwholesome food before it is shipped to store shelves.

ITD has worked in conjunction with the USDA Agriculture Research Service’s Poultry Processing And Meat Quality Research Unit in Athens, GA to develop just such a system. In initial tests, hyperspectral imagery has demonstrated the ability to recognize spectral signatures associated with unwholesome poultry conditions. Fecal contamination, skin tears, and bruising have all been successfully identified through spectral analysis.

Thorough testing of statistically significant sample sizes and integration into a slaughterhouse environment are the next steps in this research.
Hyperspectral imagery may also be beneficial for many other areas of food preparation. Fruits and vegetables, for example, have many conditions that govern their suitability for human consumption. Exposure to pesticides, pest infestation, and overall quality might be evaluated using hyperspectral imagery.

For more information about this or any of our past research, contact us.