7 PEF—A Food Industry's View

For most industrial companies to become interested in a new technology, the answer to whether the technology has the potential to improve their businessmust be positive. The next question that needs to be answered is how the new technology would improve their business. Obviously, if the processing became cheaper and resulted in the same product, that would raise industrial interest. This might be possible if subsequent processes were made more efficient or faster, as in the case of dehydration of food. The same would apply if the new process reduced the loss of valuable materials; or in the case of harvesting ingredients from plant cells, if the yield increased; or in the preservation of foods, if the new process increased shelf life. Often, however, new technologies are not cheaper and although they may use the same raw materials and ingredients, they are unlikely to produce exactly the same product. New preservation technologies are investigated because of their expected potential to inactivate microorganisms with little harm to the product. New methods regrettably tend to require investments. For the food industry, it is important to know what the improvements would be in terms of quality as perceived by customers. Only if there is at least a fair chance that consumers buy the improved productwill industry consider investing in a new technology. That being the case, several other aspects become important, including product safety, regulatory acceptance, occupational safety, investment costs, and energy costs, to name a few.