Gamma ray sterilization of canned meat previously inoculated with anaerobic bacterial spores.

Before gamma irradiation can be evaluated as a technique for preserving food in tin cans, it is necessary that the amount of radiation required for sterilization be known. Although information is available concerning the sensitivity of bacterial spores in buffers (Proctor and Goldblith, 1951; Lawrence et al., 1953), such conditions are quite different from those existing in tin cans. It therefore seemed desirable to study the effectiveness of gamma radiation for killing the spores of anaerobic, food-spoilage bacteria that were inoculated into meat packed in No. 2 tin cans; data presented here correlate the quantity of gamma radiation from cobalt-60 required to produce sterility with the numbers of such spores present in the meat.