Title:
Trying to Improve Food Safety With a Camera
Description: This is
a VOA Special English Agriculture Report.
See text below
Text:
Europe's deadly outbreak of a rare form of E. coli
bacteria has brought new attention to food safety
issues. One of the problems when people get sick
from food is that the simplest question is often
difficult or even impossible to answer. Just what
did the people eat that made them sick? Of course,
one way to avoid these medical mysteries is to keep
dangerous organisms out of the food supply. This is
easier said than done, but scientists keep trying.
Scientists in the United States have developed an
experimental system that uses a high-tech optical
scanner. This inspection system is meant for packing
houses where produce is sorted for market. The
system is designed to identify the presence of
contaminants like soil or animal waste on fresh
produce. These can be sources of Escherichia coli,
better known as E. coli. E. coli bacteria naturally
live in the intestines of humans and many animals.
Most kinds of E. coli are harmless, but some can
make people sick. The new scanner can also show
damage and imperfections that might make the produce
unappealing to shoppers. Scientists designed the
system at a Department of Agriculture research
center in Beltsville, Maryland. Moon Kim of the
Agricultural Research Service led the team. He says
they were asked to develop a method to detect
contamination in produce. So they started with the
apple as their model sample.The scanner uses a
high-speed camera placed over the conveyer belt that
moves the produce along. As the apples move along
the belt, the scanner captures images of each piece
of fruit. The system is equipped with an ultraviolet
lamp and a halogen lamp that produces near-infrared
light. A spectrograph device can use the
near-infrared light bouncing off an apple to show
evidence of damage. The ultraviolet light can show
contaminants. Moon Kim says the team hopes the
system will be available to the food industry in the
next several years.The scanner can direct a sorting
machine to separate the bad apples from the good
ones. The system is currently able to show the
surface of only half the apple as it speeds by. The
inventers hope to improve the process so it can show
the whole surface.For VOA Special English, I'm Alex
Villarreal. You can learn American English and much
more every day at voaspecialenglish.com.
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Hi. I
personally reviewed this video and found it appropriate for
the news section of English Global Group. This
is a Voice of America video which covers an interesting
topic in Special English. I would appreciate some feedback from both
students and teachers about this video. You can comment in
the window below using any of a number of different services
including Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, and Hotmail.
