Gyrotron Technology, Inc. announced that it has filed a provisional patent application for its technology for the decontamination of beef carcasses and other foodstuffs. This technology has been tested on the laboratory scale and independently verified. In those tests, heating the surface of meat for a small fraction of a second with a gyrotron, a very powerful source of high frequency microwaves, reduced the bacteria count on that surface by a factor of greater than 300,000, without compromising meat appearance.

The advantages of the company's technology include: a drastic decrease in bacteria count and therefore a decrease in cases of meat -borne illness in the U.S. and worldwide; an environmentally friendly process that would sharply reduce water consumption and eliminate the use of certain chemicals in existing decontamination processes; significant cost savings in the decontamination process; prolonged shelf life for raw meat.