Transformation and preservation agri-food products

The processing and distribution of agricultural and food products is a key industrial sector whose activities affect the whole of society. This sector, which has always played an important role in human activities, has taken on an industrial dimension over the last two centuries. Today, for example, it is the leading industrial sector in France. This economic importance has been gained through the development of specific technologies that make the best possible use of agricultural products. The processing chain from agricultural produce to the products sold on retail shelves has characteristics that distinguish it from other industries.

Most of the raw materials used in this industry are plant or animal products. As organic products, they are by nature variable, whatever the producer's efforts to homogenize them. And yet, as in all other sectors, manufacturers have a duty to market products with consistent characteristics, in order to satisfy consumer expectations.

These raw materials are perishable goods. Their preservation is the major problem facing the food industry. Preservation means maintaining the chemical and physical properties of foodstuffs, thus preserving their functional, nutritional and organoleptic properties. The deterioration of food products is caused by biological agents (small animals, micro-organisms, enzymatic activities of the raw material, etc.), chemical agents (contamination) or physical agents (heat, radiation, etc.). A distinction is made between deterioration that does not endanger the consumer's health (spoilage), and deterioration that can make the consumer ill and no longer allow the product to be considered a food. Food industry methods therefore seek to limit these factors of deterioration in raw materials, and to control chemical or enzymatic transformations during processing and storage. The transformations that enable a food product to be preserved are the primary service provided by the food industry to consumers. Despite the importance of stabilizing product quality, the principles of industry-validated preservation techniques are not very varied. It is the improvement of the nutritional or organoleptic quality of foodstuffs that has justified the emergence of new preservation technologies, such as high-pressure sterilization or osmotic dehydration techniques, rather than the sole need to improve the bacteriological qualities of treated products. Nevertheless, this problem remains for certain fresh and fermented products.

Paradoxically, it's probably not around conservation that this industrial sector's most notorious innovation efforts are taking place.

Last but not least, these products are intended for human ingestion.

The first corollary of this...