Annual Aaron Brody Distinguished Lecture in Food PackagingDate : March 22, 2017
Time : 3:00 PM

Featured Speaker:

Dr. Keith Warriner
Associate Professor at the University of GuelphPackaging Solutions to Reduce Food WasteOver 40% of food produced is lost through waste be it consumers diligently referring to Best Before Dates or via actually spoilage. It is generally accepted that food waste needs to be reduced in order to have sustainability in a world in which the population is forecasted to reach over 12 billion by 2050. Packaging tends to be entangled in the food waste debate in a negative context of polluting the environment. However, in reality packaging has a central role in reducing food waste through preservation approaches or intelligent packaging that can report on the product quality as opposed to going by an arbitrary Best Before Date. In the following presentation the background to the food waste issue will be described and potential approaches by which packaging can reduce the problem discussed. 

 

 

Dr. Keith Warriner is currently an Associate Professor within the Department of Food Science at University of Guelph, Canada. Dr. Warriner received his BSc in Food Science from the University of Nottingham, UK and PhD in Microbial Physiology from the University College of Wales Aberystwyth, UK. He later went on to work on biosensors within the University of Manchester, UK and subsequently returned to the University of Nottingham to become a Research Fellow in Food Microbiology. He joined the Faculty of the University of Guelph in 2002.

During the last fifteen years in the field of microbiology and food safety research, Dr. Warriner has published more than 100 papers, book chapters, patents, and conference abstracts. He has broad research areas encompassing development of decontamination technologies, biosensors for biohazard detection, and more fundamental research on the interaction of human pathogens with plants. One notable research accomplishment was the development of a decontamination treatment for sanitizing seeds destined for sprout production and a further process based on Advanced Oxidation Process for inactivating pathogens on fresh produce. Current research is focused at developing waste water treatment and recycling systems with vegetable processing. In addition, he has an active research project looking at the dissemination of Clostridium difficile in watercourses.