• Preventive Nutrition and Food Science
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.232-235
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• 2004

Since ready-to-use (RTU) products are not fully cooked, the shelf-life of the product is comparably short and the products are easily spoiled when contaminated with food-borne pathogens. Low-dose gamma irradiation of 0.5, 1, or 2 kGy effectively reduced the total aerobic bacterial counts in 2 Korean manufactured RTU products by 1.63 to 2.95 log CFU/g during cold storage. Irradiation at 2 kGy reduced the psychrotrophic bacterial counts in most of the samples to below the limit of detection (< log CFU/g). Irradiation at 0.5 kGy completely eliminated Escherichia coli from the commercial RTU samples.