Food and Environment: The Quest for a Sustainable Future(152 WIT Transactions on Ecology and the Environment)

The many advances in food production over the past century have made it possible to feed the whole of humanity. But food production and processing can have detrimental effects on the environment. Major challenges remain with industrial-scale farming. Higher productivity and larger volumes should not come at the expense of product quality or animal suffering. Despite their importance, the consequences of food-related problems have not been sufficiently considered. It is essential to understand the impact that food production processes and the demands of rising living standards can have on the food consumed daily by the world's people. Of particular importance are the effects on human health and the well-being of the population, as well as the more general issues related to possible damage to the environment and ecology. This book includes contributions presented at the first international conference convened to examine these challenges. Topics include: Impact of food production on the Environment; Contamination of Food; Food Processing Issues; Traceability and Temperature Control; Characterisation of Foodplants.The book will be of interest to food scientists and nutritionists, as well as agricultural, ecological, and environmental health experts interested in all these challenges.

Table of Contents:
Contents Section 1: Impact of food production on the environment Environmental impacts of local food production in Japan and changes needed for future sustainability; Agrarian urban architecture; Dryland crop production and greenhouse gas emissions in Canada: a regional comparison; Assessment of hazards in local soy-cheese processing: implications on health and environment in Oyo State, Nigeria; Use of blast furnace slag and water treatment residues to reduce the runoff of dissolved reactive phosphorus from agricultural lands; Environmental and economic evaluation of conventional and organic production systems in the Canadian Prairie provinces Section 2: Contamination of food Microbial growth models for shelf life prediction in an Icelandic cod supply chain; Risk assessment of exposure to multiple mycotoxins in food; Emerging contaminants in consumer products: environmental fate and transfer to human food-chain; Soil composition of community gardens: are there quality concerns?; Degradation of histamine in tuna soup by diamine oxidase (DAO); Microbiological quality of fresh (unpasteurized) fruit juices in Makkah, Saudi Arabia; Air fungal contamination in ten hospitals' food units from Lisbon Section 3: Food processing issues Quality indices, polyphenols, terpenic acids, squalene, fatty acid profile, and sterols in virgin olive oil produced by organic versus non-organic cultivation method; Nutrient constituents, functional attributes and in vitro protein digestibility of the seeds of the Lathyrus plant; Household processing and dissemination of tomato paste technology Section 4: Traceability and temperature control Multicriteria model for the selection of traceability and temperature control technologies along the cold chain. Novel solutions supporting inter-organisational quality and information management; Quality losses in deep-frozen foodstuffs at cyclically modified storage temperatures Section 5: Characterisation of foodplants The phytotoxicity of 2,4,6-Trichlorophenol and Phenol to local agricultural plant species in China; Siddha herbs for obesity