Division of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, 134th Meeting, .ICS'. Chicago, III. Paper No. 954 in series approved for publication. The views or conclusions are those of the authors. Mention of company products does not constitute endorsement of the department over others not named.

The presence of hydrocarbons among the volatile compounds in food products, particularly in irradiated meat, was first discovered by Merritt and his co‐workers in 1959 (5,6). It is the purpose of this paper to focus wider attention on this significant discovery and to report briefly on new work which relates the formation of hydrocarbons in irradiated meat to lipids.