This study was conducted to determine the potential of an RF thermal treatment to improve and extend the storability of vacuum-packaged carrot sticks stored at 5-6 o C. The results have shown that it is possible to treat carrot sticks to 60 o C in less than 2 min in a parallel plate RF applicator, and thus reduce the initial total microbial load. The RF treatments were compared to chlorinated water dipping, and hot water dipping. All storage trials of 7-14 days at 6 o C, have indicated that the reduction of the initial microbial load alone does not maintain the quality of carrot sticks for 14 days, since at this point the microbial loads in all cases studied were higher than 3x10 6 . Nonetheless, the quality of the RF treated samples was greater than for either the control samples (chlorinated water) or hot-water-treated carrot samples. The RF-treatments maintained colour, taste and the vacuum of the packages, which was not the case for control and hot-water-treated carrots.