A Pioneer in Thermal Death-Time Standards

While at Mead Corp. (now MeadWestvaco Corp.), Dr. Brody had the chance to work with Ball on sponsored research in another area of Ball’s expertise, aseptic canning. They worked together at New Jersey’s Rutgers University, where Ball headed the food sciences department, which now awards a student scholarship in his name. “Ball, along with William McKinley Martin, developed aseptic canning methods in the 1930s in which they sterilized a can and a food product separately and then brought them together in a sterile environment without retort operations [a compensation method for problems or mistakes],” Dr. Brody said. “Their canning systems were the first aseptic processes with evidence that separately sterilized packaging and product brought together in a sterile environment required no further heating.”

As Dr. Brody remembers it, Ball was very formal. “It was like dealing with someone from the 19th century,” he said. “He was very proper, very precise and conservative. He also was extremely conscious of food safety and of killing organisms to make sure they were dead.”

Dr. Pflug also remembers Ball for his work in heat penetration and aseptic canning. “He was an older gentleman in 1955 when I knew him, and he had built a couple of aseptic processing machines. He was canning in a steel room to pressurize the cans and decrease the heating time,” Dr. Pflug said. The room was more than 8 feet in diameter and was pressurized so people could work inside it. “The people took the same safety precautions as a diver,” he remembered. Ball was trying to improve the process for cooking meat, which heats slowly if canned as a solid piece. But when cut into smaller pieces, sealed, and heated, the canning was improved, he said. “The goal was better quality.”

Ball, a native of Abilene, Kan., earned a bachelor’s in mathematics before attending graduate school at George Washington University from 1919-1922. While at George Washington, he researched the sterilization of canned foods for the National Canners Association. The formulae for thermal death time, which became an FDA standard for calculating thermal processes, is still in use today. After graduate studies, Ball worked for the American Can Co. in Illinois and New York, earning 29 patents. From 1944-1946, he worked at Owens-Illinois Glass Co. before joining Rutgers University, where from 1949-1963 he was a professor and later chair of the food science department. Ball was also president of the Institute of Food Technologists from 1963-1964. He won the Nicolas Appert Award in 1947 and served as the first editor-in-chief of Food Technology magazine from 1947-1950. He died in 1970.

Microbiology in the Mix

While Ball designed a safe process, his contemporaries —Dr. Esty, Bigelow, and Dr. Meyer—contributed microbiology to the mix to produce safe food. They studied resident microorganisms and how to kill them to preserve food. “Their work was important, another leg up on when Louis Pasteur discovered we had microorganisms,” Dr. Pflug said. Pasteur, in 1864, was the first to link spoilage and fermentation with microbiology (see Food Quality, April/May 2011, “A Key Figure in Food Safety: Louis Pasteur discovered that microorganisms spoil wine and milk”).

As Dr. Pflug sees it, while the technique of canning was improved by Ball’s contribution, Dr. Esty, Bigelow, and Dr. Myer studied what was required to process the food, specifically controlling microorganisms through pH. “By adjusting pH, you can better control for microorganisms,” he said.