Education for Food Technology

In 1951, a two year diploma course was begun at the Hawkesbury Agricultural College and, with changes in the status of the Sydney Technical College, the food technology course there evolved in 1953 into a degree course in the University of New South Wales. Later other courses were established in colleges of advanced education (CAEs).[133] People trained in food technology became available to work with the chemists, microbiologists and engineers already in the food industry but who also in the sixties began to enter it in greater numbers. Possibly even more importantly, higher degrees began to be awarded by universities and CAEs for work in government laboratories, such as CSIRO in Melbourne and Sydney and the Otto Madsen Dairy Research Laboratories in Brisbane, and in industry R & D departments, such as Kraft in Melbourne, Unilever in Sydney and the Queensland Butter Board in Brisbane. From the 1950s, events in Australia, the increase in literature from abroad and the reports of travellers, more sophisticated processes and packaging, and the regulatory demands of government, combined to emphasize that science was changing the traditional food technologies and introducing some new ones.

In 1939, CSIR had set up a Section of Dairy Research (later a Division and now the Dairy Research Laboratories of the Division of Food Research). This rapidly became the scientific and technological focus of the dairy industry and contributed to the world revolution in dairy technology which followed the end of the war.[134] The laboratories of the Division of Food Preservation and Transport (as it then was) in Sydney, Brisbane and Hobart expanded their scientific work to include basic work in chemistry, microbiology, biochemistry and process technology and continued in the post-war years to offer short courses and technical back-up to the food industry. In addition, the companies already noted, Carlton and United Breweries, Kraft, and CSR, expanded their existing R & D departments whose staffs, with others, contributed to emerging educational and professional activities.

Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering