Food and employment

Technology

Some of the most remarkable developments in recent years in food and drink sector technology have been convenient pre-cooked frozen foods, retort pouch foods and dried foods. Worthy of note recently are developments in container and tank lorry transportation, concentration using membrane technology in processing operations, vacuum refrigeration, vacuum freezing and pressurized extrusion moulding using two axle extruders. In storage operations, technologies such as vapour drying, heat exchange sterilization, de-oxygenation agents, sterile filling packaging, gelatine packaging and PET Polyethylene terephthalate) bottle packaging have been developed.

RFID/Nanotechnology

Since traceability systems are more and more in demand throughout the supply chain, the increasingly rapid take-up of RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) technology in retail supply chains may have major employment and socio-economic implications not only for the food and beverage sector but industry as a whole. Similarly, nanotechnology – the science of manipulating matter at the level of atoms and molecules – will provide a new technology platform for launching new products and modifying existing ones, for example toxin-sensors or better and less expensive bio-markers.