1.3. Driving force for innovation in food quality monitoring
The prime driving force is the growing consumer demand for
mildly preserved, minimally processed, easily prepared and ready to eat fresher foods (Nopwinyuwong, Trevanich, &Suppakul, 2010).Also, the innovations are fueled by globalization of food business and, therefore, food products are needed to be kept fresh over long distances and time. Conventional packaging techniques are inadequate to meet this requirement. In addition, consumers’ complaint sover the reduction in shelf life of foods and an increase in the risk of
food-borne illnesses from microorganisms reporting around the world in recent years are also an important issue. Food traceability throughout the food supply chain is increasingly becoming a necessary task, mandatory in European Union (EU) since 2005(Giraud & Halawany, 2006). In the light of the above, to maintain safety and freshness and to evaluate real-time freshness of food products, there is a constant need to develop a cost-effective, accurate, rapid, reliable, non-invasive and non-destructive methods or devices. Therefore, in order to achieve these goals, a measurable technology, visually or instrumentally, should be developed which provide in-situ information about the gas composition and, therefore, information on food quality of packaged foods through any point of food supply chain until reaching the consumer.Indicator should be very inexpensive, and not add significantly to the overall cost of the package. It should be non-toxic, and have non-water soluble nature. The sensor components should have approval for use in food-contact materials. Also, it should not require an expensive instrumentation for analysis and should be able to check it even by an untrained person. It also should exhibit an irreversible response toward analytes.