Agriculture is the science and art of cultivating plants and livestock. The agriculture industry started thousands of years ago and is currently one of the world’s largest industries. It employs more than a billion people and generates over a trillion dollars of products annually. Cutting raw materials and production costs while ensuring safety and quality is a daunting task to the Agriculture industry. The variation in ingredients and materials used in agriculture process presents challenges for quality...
The animal feed industry is estimated around $250 billion Dollars and the beginning of its industrial scale production is tracked back to the late 19th century. 70 to 80 percent of the cost in producing animals is the feed cost. Reaching an optimal balance of nutrition to enable fastest, cheapest growth for animals at lowest cost is very desirable.
Dairy products include milk and milk-based products such as butter, cheese, yogurt, and ice cream. Milk production in the United States is over 200 billion pounds yearly and approximately 63% of this is converted into other products. The industry is expanding due to technological advances in milk production efficiency as well as consumer demand for new and more healthy products. Butter, cheese, and yogurt production can be a complex process and there is a demand for more efficient methods of quality control,...
The global seafood market has greatly expanded due to advancements in fishing vessels, improvements in food processing and storage, and the development of the industry in new countries. While this expansion has increased market size and product choice for consumers, it has also brought on new challenges for quality testing as well as the expansion of illegal practices and fraud. Strict regulations exist but are difficult to enforce in practice. Visual inspection is usually insufficient to determine if a...
Coffee is a brewed drink prepared from ground roasted coffee beans, which are the seeds of berries from the coffea plant. Over 2.25 billion cups of coffee are consumed daily and it is one of the world`s most popular beverages.
Quality assurance in meat production is critical for price and brand production as well as for safeguarding human health. The financial consequences of product recall as well as the implications of poor quality in today`s social media environment can have devastating effects for meat companies. Increased health awareness has made testing for fat and fatty acids especially important for meat producers. There is a demand for new quality control methods for testing sausage, poultry, ground beef, and other meat...
Food adulteration is at the top of the list when it comes to food safety concerns, especially following recent incidents, such as the 2008 Chinese powdered milk scandal. That scandal involved milk and infant formula along with other food materials and components being adulterated with melamine. There were an estimated 300,000 victims in total, including six infant deaths, resulting from kidney stones and other kidney damage.