About Us > Q & A
Fast Facts
Address: 6502 South Archer
Road, Summit-Argo, IL 60501-1933.
Phone: 708.563.1576
Fax: 708.563.1873
http://www.ncfst.iit.edu
The National Center is
located on the Moffett Campus of Illinois Institute of Technology,
near Chicago's Midway airport. Facilities include research laboratories,
pilot plants for industrial-scale experiments, offices, a library,
classrooms and conference rooms equipped for teleconferencing
and videoconferencing.
The National Center was
founded in 1988 and dedicated in 1991 by Dr. David Kessler, then
commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration. Start up funding
for the National Center included a $3.7 million cooperative agreement
with FDA and a $7 million gift of buildings from CPC International,
Inc. to IIT.
The National Center is
currently funded through a cooperative agreement with FDA, membership
fees, state funds and research grants.
Activities
- Joint industry-government-academia
research on food safety
issues
- Emergency "task force" joint
research on urgent concerns
- Training
programs for
industry (i.e. food
security and bioterrorism,
safer processing of fresh
juice, other topics)
- Master's
programs in food safety
and food engineering
- Externally
funded food safety
research
- Technical services
(i.e. identifying
pathogens, tracing
contamination, characterizing
organisms that survive
a given process)
- Proprietary
research for industry
clients
- Presentations
and publications
for academic and
industry audiences
Research
areas: High pressure
processing;
Ultraviolet processing;
Irradiation; Aseptic
processing; Food packaging;
Pathogens such as E. coli O157:H7,
Listeria
monocytogenes,
Salmonella, Clostridium
botulinum
(cause of botulism);
Fumonisin
and other mycotoxins; Biotechnology;
Allergens; Hazard
Analysis
and Critical
Control
Point (HACCP)
food safety
programs; Prevention
of illness from
dairy products, ready-to-eat
meats, eggs, juices,
ground beef,
sprouts,
and
seafood.
Research accomplishments:
- The National Center has
been the key research
site in the development of high pressure processing. HPP is a safe, healthier
and radical alternative to
the traditional method
for processing food: heating it until the bacteria (and many of the nutrients)
are destroyed.
- Beef irradiated to kill
the deadly E. coli
O157:H7 is on the market today because National Center scientists identified
packaging
films that can be safely
irradiated.
- A National
Center task force on
sprout safety reviewed
growing practices in
the sprout industry and
recommended several
changes. Reports of illness from
contaminated sprouts
have dropped dramatically.
- A workshop at the National
Center led to the
first FDA approval of aseptic processing for soups and other liquid/solid food
combinations.
Soup comes in
glass jars or metal
cans because it is sterilized with heat after packaging. Heating before packaging
(aseptic processing) would
preserve more nutrients
and permit the use of lighter, flexible packages.
- The National Center maintains
a large database
of published DNA sequences for detection and identification of food-related microbes,
determination
of allergenicity
and other applications.
- A
team of National Center
scientists studied apple
cider safety under realistic
processing conditions.
Their findings shaped
FDA
policy on fresh juice processing.
- National Center researchers
showed that even
contaminated plastic could be recycled into food packages by sandwiching the
used plastic
between layers of virgin
material.
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