N EST L É
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SAFE TO DRINK
Nestlé screens Nesquik ingredients with near-infrared spectroscopy prior to production.
MAKING FOOD SAFER Recalls and public concern drive the push for GREATER VIGILANCE
JYLLIAN KEMSLEY, C&EN WEST COAST NEWS BUREAU, AND MARC S. REISCH, C&EN NORTHEAST NEWS BUREAU
THE PAST FEW YEARS have seen a host of
food recalls in the U.S. due to food-borne pathogens: illness-causing strains of Escherichia coli in beef and cookie dough, for example, and Salmonella contamination of peanuts and jalapeño peppers. “Every year, millions of people in the United States suffer from food-borne illness, hundreds of thousands are hospitalized, and thousands die,” Food & Drug Administration Commissioner Margaret A. Hamburg said last month at a Senate committee hearing on food safety legislation. “Food safety is a core public health issue.” According to data from the Census Bureau and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, U.S. consumers eat 600 billion lb of food annually. Adding to food worries is the fact that an increasing amount of that food is being imported from sometimes exotic locales, where food standards might not be as strict as those in the U.S. Imported food has doubled in value to about $80 billion over the past 10 years, USDA’s Economic Research Service says. The U.S. is not the only nation con-
cerned about food safety. Toxic dyes in of Representatives on July 30, and simispices and pesticide-contaminated fruit lar legislation in the Senate is expected have been problems in Europe. In 2008, to pass before year-end. The bills would Japan recalled insecticide-tainted Chinese require food producers to develop condumplings. In addition, the discovery of tamination-control plans based on hazard melamine in milk products rocked China analysis and risk identification (C&EN, last year after tainted formula sickened July 6, page 20). hundreds of thousands of infants (C&EN, Recalls, import alerts, and new regulaMay 25, page 36). tions are all combining to put an increased Regulation has tended to follow public emphasis on analytical food testing. Instruattention. The European Union and Japan ment makers are seeing double-digit growth have led the way in setting standards for in the food safety market, even in a poor hundreds of trace chemical contaminants. economy. And in the lab, food scientists are In China, a food safety law that went into working to develop faster, more sensitive effect on June 1 aims methods that can to raise safety stanbroadly screen for CONTENTS dards, tighten regulaboth known and unGUARDIANS OF FOOD 12 tions, and improve known contaminants. oversight of food All of this should Analytical chemists strive to develop production. result in a safer food efficient methods for contaminants In the U.S., food supply, which FDA’s known and unknown. safety bills are workHamburg said would ing their way through INVESTING IN INSTRUMENTS 15 cause “fewer hospitalCongress. The Food Concern over food recalls gives izations and deaths, Safety Enhancement makers of testing equipment a [and] fewer economiAct of 2009 was new business opportunity. cally devastating passed by the House recalls.” ■
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USDA
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the University of California, Davis. Biological contaminants, on the other hand, are generally not homogeneous. Escherichia coli bacteria from wildlife feces, for example, are apt to take hold in a localized hot spot. “You’re probably more likely to miss it than to find it,” Suslow says, noting that the patchy nature of pathogen colonies is currently one of the biggest obstacles to ensuring the safety of fruits and vegetables. One solution would be a product wash step, from which liquid could be collected, concentrated, and analyzed. Another would be in-line spectral analysis that could check each unit of food as it passes by on a conveyor belt. “But these are not trivial solutions,” Suslow says, pointing out the high cost of purchasing, installing, and maintaining equipment. Once a product has been sampled, it might go through some sort of in-field rapid screening. U.S. Department of Agriculture meat inspectors, for example, use a field test for bacterial growth to check for broadspectrum antibiotic drugs in cattle kidneys, says Emilio Esteban, USDA science adviser for laboratory services and research. An inspector cuts a notch into an animal kidney, swabs the organ, and then inserts the swab into a tube inoculated with bacteria. If no antibiotics are present, a six-hour incubation period allows those bacteria to grow and produce acid; the drop in pH causes a colorimetric indicator to change from U.S., ONGOING Ground beef purple to yellow. If antibiis frequently otics are present and kill recalled in the the bacteria, however, the U.S. for E. coli tube stays purple. or Salmonella contamination. Field tests, though, tend to be nonspecific. Generally, all that current technology can do is raise a red flag that further analysis is needed. In the case of a positive kidney test, USDA then must send kidney samples back to an agency lab for further testing to determine the identity and amount of the drug or drugs that are present. And sending a field sample CHECKUP
TESTING LIFE’S STAPLES
Time, sensitivity, and broad SCREENING FOR CONTAMINANTS in a multitude of matrices are critical for food analysis JYLLIAN KEMSLEY, C&EN WEST COAST NEWS BUREAU
“LABORATORY TESTING is an essential
component of a science-based food safety system,” said Food & Drug Administration Commissioner Margaret A. Hamburg during congressional testimony in June. Food safety bills now wending their way through Congress would, in part, increase laboratory testing as a way to prevent food-borne illnesses. Laboratory testing for food safety, however, is complicated. Analysts must watch for contaminants as varied as bacteria and pesticides in matrices from burritos to peaches. To help manage it all, researchers and instrument companies are working on ways to streamline, automate, and accelerate sample preparation and analysis, as well as increase sensitivity to cope with new regulatory limits. To start, there is the vast number of things to look for—chemicals such as pesticides, veterinary drugs, mycotoxins, and harvesting or processing contaminants, as well as biological hazards such as bacteria, molds, viruses, parasites, and allergens. And then, as incidents of drug and food adulteration have illustrated in the past few years, there are the things that food analysts don’t know to look for.
There is also a wide variety of matrices at play, from raw fruits and vegetables to processed foods such as cereal or canned stew. Challenges exist in sampling, sample preparation, and actual analysis—especially if food producers and manufacturers also have to watch for unanticipated adulterants in addition to known contaminants. Last but not least, as analysts cope with all of the above, they’re under intense pressure to produce results quickly enough so that the food in question doesn’t go bad while they are running the tests. Sampling is where food analysis begins. Sampling a crop for pesticide residues is fairly
RECALLED straightforward because agricultural chemicals are typically applied uniformly to a crop, says Trevor Suslow, a researcher in the Postharvest Technology Research & Information Center at
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ALL FOOD PHOTOS BY SHUTTERSTOCK
USDA Food Safety & Inspection Service examiner Rissa Denise Cooper scrutinizes a swine’s head.
to a lab for analysis takes a significant amount of time. “People are dreaming” about handheld instruments that could do everything in one spot, whether in an agricultural field, in a meat-packing plant, or at a port, says Stuart Cram, vice president for strategic marketing of scientific instruments at Thermo Fisher Scientific. The goal would be something that is low cost but that has the resolution of a mass spectrometer. The Department of Homeland Security is working on ways to make their chemical labs more mobile, Cram says, and that technology could eventually be brought to the food industry. For now, however, samples in need of detailed analysis must go to a lab, where the next step is to prepare the sample for testing. Analytical instruments that could JAPAN, 2008 Japan recalled handle a simple Chinese dumplings “dilute and shoot” tainted with the approach would organophosphate be ideal, “but that insecticide requires greater sen- methamidophos. sitivity on the part of the instrument,” says Joe Anacleto, vice president of applied markets and clinical research for Life Technologies’ mass spectrometry division. “A lot of sample prep involves doing some concentration of your sample so that you can detect lower levels.” THE STANDARD sample prep technique to
extract and concentrate pesticides, antimicrobials, and other chemical contaminants is based on a method known as QuEChERS, which stands for quick, easy, cheap, effective, rugged, and safe. The technique was developed earlier this decade by USDA scientist Steven J. Lehotay and colleagues (J. AOAC Int. 2003, 86, 412). The general approach involves extracting of a frozen 10-g sample in a solvent such as acetonitrile, followed by liquidliquid partitioning. A dispersive solidphase extraction using a polymer sorbent then removes residual water and cleans the sample by removing polar matrix components, such as organic acids and sugars. The resulting sample can be analyzed by either gas or liquid chromatography. Lehotay and colleagues have continued to work on QuEChERS-based sample prep-
aration methods that enable broad multiresidue screens, USDA’s Esteban says. The USDA Food Safety & Inspection Service alone receives and tests roughly 150,000 samples per year for chemical and microbial contaminants. “We can’t just take one sample at a time and analyze for one thing, we need to analyze for a lot of things,” Esteban says. To accomplish that, USDA tries to limit sample preparation to four or five methods that can be used to target compound classes, such as herbicides and pesticides or antimicrobial agents. But those methods could
RECALLED still have to be modified depending on the sample matrix. By one estimate there are more than 50,000 different matrices of foods, beverages, and agricultural products, Thermo Fisher’s Cram says. Coming up with a sample prep method for each of those requires “working backward from the regulatory detection level, data-quality requirements, and chemical background that you’re likely to encounter,” he says. “Then you have to focus on the nature of the sample, whether it’s ice cream, fruits and vegetables, or calf liver.” The time and labor required to isolate contaminants from the sample matrix is the rate-limiting step for food safety analysis. One newer approach to automating and accelerating sample prep is turbulent flow chromatography. This method involves using a column packed with large particles—40–50 µm in diameter versus the 2–5-µm-diameter particles in a typical high-performance liquid chromatography column— and forcing the mobile phase through the column so quickly that eddy currents develop. The combination of large particles and eddy currents means that larger molecules flow through the column faster than smaller molecules. A sample need only be extracted and centrifuged (if it is a liquid, only centrifuged) before being injected directly onto the column for cleanup, after which it can be directly routed to an LC or LC/MS system. Another new technique for sample prep is solid-phase microextraction, in which a sorbent-coated fiber absorbs either an ana-
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lyte from a liquid or, in the case of volatile compounds, the vapor phase from a vial’s headspace. There is still an equilibration time, notes Yolanda Fintschenko, manager of food safety technologies at Thermo Fisher, but the process can be automated. Overall, solid-phase microextraction uses little solvent, making it one of the more environmentally friendly approaches to sample preparation. ONCE A SAMPLE is prepared, the next
hurdle is the actual analytical testing. Testing all foods for all possible contaminants, whether chemical or biological, is cost- and time-prohibitive. “We design the quality control we should do on different products depending on the risk of finding particular contaminants in specific matrices,” says Fabien Robert, who heads the Compound Identification Group in the Department of Quality & Safety at the Nestlé Research Center. The company will typically check cereal grains for mycotoxins, for example, and fruits and vegetables for pesticides. To check for chemical contaminants or for quality control in the field, Nestlé primarily uses RECALLED methods such as immunoaffinity assays. In factories, the company uses techniques such as near-infrared spectroscopy to screen raw materials or semifinished and finished products, Robert says. Near-IR spectroscopy can detect contaminants down to about parts-per-million levels; if the company is concerned about lower concentrations, it turns to more sensitive and specific techniques, such as HPLC with ultraviolet detection. If one of the rapid testing methods sends up a red flag, the company U.S. & CHINA, 2007 & then sends sam2008 Melamine, which ples to one of its can mimic protein specialized labs, in some laboratory where analysts tests, was found in typically turn to U.S. pet food in 2007 and in Chinese infant MS methods to formula and other identify the spemilk products in 2008. cific compound involved. As regulations tighten and contaminants such as residual pesticides and antibiotics have to be held at lower levels, MS is increasingly moving to the front line of food analysis, says David J.
Elliott, president of contract lab Environremoved and run on a gel. Life Technoloproving that they’re there is an emerging mental Micro Analysis. gies is also looking at using RNA instead area,” Musser says. “We don’t yet have Environmental Micro Analysis’ choice of of DNA targets, Furtado says. Although a QuEChERS equivalent for proteins.” technique depends primarily on two things. an organism might have only one or two A starting approach for something like First, the analysts look at the chemical propcopies of a particular gene target, it could peanut allergens in chocolate would likely erties of the contaminant. Elliott notes, for have 50–60 copies of the analogous RNA, involve defatting the sample, purifying the example, that many newer pesticides, such making it more likely that the nucleic acid protein, enzymatically digesting the proas Bayer CropScience’s spirotetramat for sequence in question will be detected. tein, and then using LC/MS techniques to aphids, cicadas, and other sucking insects, USDA uses PCR-based tests to look for identify the resulting peptides. That sort of are not vapor-phase stable and cannot be anbacteria, in particular E. coli, Salmonella, analytical approach “is very common in the alyzed by GC. Second, the analysts consider and Listeria, and plans to add Campyclinical proteomics field,” Musser says, but the regulatory requirements. If the contamilobacter to its regular screens in 2010, on the sample prep side, foods are much nants are limited to the parts-per-billion Esteban says. Once a sample arrives in the more challenging than the typical clinical range, MS—and, in particular, a tandem MS lab, agency scientists can have the result in samples of urine or blood. setup—often becomes necessary. 24 hours. But it’s not enough to determine More generally, labs of all kinds are whether bacteria are present, he adds. In STILL, ALL THESE challenges pale in working on multiresidue analysis methods the case of bacterial pathogens, the genus, comparison with the biggest threat to that would allow a single sample to be run species, and particular strain must be modern-day food production: the unthrough several MS detectors, enabling identified. Most E. coli, for expected. And that could be a terrorist analysts to screen for 200 or more example, are harmless, but adding cyanide or ricin to the food supply compounds in one shot. or an unethical supplier substiOn the biological contaminants SCRUTINIZED tuting a cheaper—and possibly side, the analytical workhorses toxic—ingredient. are immunoaffinity assays and “The biggest thing that is scaring the polymerase chain reaction (PCR)heck out of people is looking for things based tests. The challenge in this they don’t expect, like melamine,” says area is that FDA guidelines say that Paul Zavitsanos, Agilent’s worldwide food tests need to detect as few as one or industry manager. “Now people are asktwo bacteria in 25 g of meat. Doing ing, ‘How do we not leave these things to TURKEY, 2009 Inspections the O157:H7 strain can that directly “is out of reach of any chance? What kind of analysis workflow of Turkish pears in of the current capabilities in any cause bloody diarrhea and systems can we use to catch these October detected levels kind of system today,” says Manoand kidney failure and things at the first pass?’ ” of the triazapentadiene har Furtado, a scientific fellow at has been implicated Starting approaches include using any insecticide amitraz Life Technologies. What analysts in several U.S. food analytical technique, from high-resolution at 1,000 times the regulatory limit, leading do now to achieve FDA’s detecrecalls. MS or nuclear magnetic resonance specthe European Union to tion limit, as well as to determine One emerging biotroscopy to near-IR spectroscopy, to acrecommend additional whether an organism is actually logical contaminant quire as much data as possible. Then anaimport testing. alive, is to grow some sort of bactecausing food safety lysts can apply software and chemometrics rial culture. concerns is the alto mine the data for things that don’t fit a Culture growth is far and away lergen. FDA analyzes typical fingerprint. But “you have to be sure the biggest time sink in bacterial identificafoods to look for possible allergens, such that you have well defined the space of your tion. With the usable life of perishable foods as particular proteins in peanuts, as part model,” Nestlé’s Robert says. A model that hanging in the balance, food companies are of surveillance to ensure labeling accuis too narrow will yield many false posianxious to find ways to reduce the time it racy. In this case, analysts are looking for a tives. But if it isn’t narrow enough, it risks takes to achieve results, Furtado says. Using very small amount of an allergenic protein not picking up an adulterant or contamilarger amounts of culture broth, richer mein a matrix that, of course, is full of many nant. “The challenge is to find the right dia, and magnetic, antibody-laced beads can other proteins, says Steven Musser, who balance,” Robert says, noting that Nestlé lead to E. coli identification in less than eight directs the Office of Regulatory Science is also trying to anticipate why and which hours, compared with as long as 27 hours. at FDA’s Center for Food Safety & Applied food ingredients would or could be adulOther approaches are real-time PCRNutrition. terated and to develop specific methods to based tests that amplify genetic material Allergenic proteins can be present in address those concerns. and detect sequences of interest within a the low parts-per-million to high partsThe challenges facing analytical chemists single tube so that DNA doesn’t have to be per-billion range, “so getting them out and guarding our food are relentless. Even as their methods become faster and more sensitive and new ones are developed, expanding global sourcing of food, identification of new threats to safety, and implementation of new regulations will continue to put pressure on them. Their efforts help ensure that we can sit down to a safe dinner each night. ■
“The biggest thing that is scaring the heck out of people is looking for things they don’t expect, like melamine.” WWW.CEN-ONLINE.ORG
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THERE’S MONEY IN SAFER FOOD As concern grows over food recalls, instrument makers eye a GROWING MARKET for test equipment MARC S. REISCH, C&EN NORTHEAST NEWS BUREAU
breaks, consumers inevitably scurry to see whether they have the offending item in their refrigerators or pantries. Then they wonder whether the rest of the food in their homes is safe to eat. But the recalls do more than just frighten the public; they are also costly to food producers and distributors. Domestically, Congress is considering legislation to strengthen food-handling, record-keeping, and safety requirements, and President Barack Obama has promised to back stricter food safety standards. Internationally, governments are increasing scrutiny of food safety controls, both to guarantee growth in food exports and to ensure the safety of domestic supplies. Scientific instrument makers say they have the goods to help support all this enforcement of safety standards. Given the variety of pesticides, antibiotics, and bacteria that can contaminate food, instrument makers say governments and grocery suppliers aren’t well prepared to safeguard the food supply. The volume of food recalls over the past few years “exposes how inadequate testing is on a global basis, both in government and private companies,” says Gregory J. Herrema, president of the analytical instruments business at Thermo Fisher Scientific. Agilent Technologies’ worldwide food industry manager, Paul Zavitsanos, points to an additional cause for alarm: The globalization and industrialization of the food supply are “stressing the existing safety system,” he says. Both executives say increased testing would help prevent contaminated food DETECTIVE from ever reach- A technician prepares food ing consumers. samples for A good sign, they analysis at an NSF say, is that both International lab in Ann Arbor, Mich. the government
and food processors are testing food more often. Even during the recession, when sales of testing equipment to chemical and pharmaceutical customers have slowed, sales of food testing equipment are growing unabated at 8–12% per year. Equipment makers serve a roughly $2 billion U.S. market for food toxin and pathogen testing. For instrument makers, food safety testing doesn’t just represent an offset to the slowdown in the chemical and drug testing business, says Isaac Ro, a senior analyst with the investment banking firm Leerink Swann. “Sale of inCovance’s business with struments for food testing is a RECALLED multinational clients. The firm, new business opportunity,” he which has been in the food maintains. testing business for 70 years, already has a Covance, best known as a contract food testing lab in Singapore, and “we are pharmaceutical research organization, says looking at other possible overseas labs,” growth of its food safety testing service has he says. surged over the past 18–24 months. In 2007, New scrutiny of the food supply by the about 10% of the roughly 300,000 samples U.S. Food & Drug Administration and its coming into its labs from food processors foreign counterparts is also likely to benefit Covance, Vasquez says. “FDA’s target is to test 5% of imported food, but it only tests about 1% now. New legislation could lead to testing of up to 10% of imported food. So FDA might tap certified labs to support testing for the government,” he says. Chinese government agencies responsible for exports have invested heavily in testing equipment after scandals involving melamine-contaminated pet food, milk powder, and infant formula, Thermo Fisher’s Herrema points out. “There has been an enormous wave of investment in testing infrastructure in China to rebuild confidence in the quality of food coming out of the country,” he says. Herrema also sees a big Chinese market for equipment to test food for domestic consumption. Little, if any, of the local food supply is scrutinized for contaminants, he says. “The domestic infrastructure in China represents a growth opportunity,” he adds. NSF INTERNATI ONAL
WHENEVER NEWS of another food recall
were tested for the presence of bacterial, chemical, and heavy-metal contaminants, recalls Marlo Vasquez, general manager of nutritional chemistry. Today, the firm’s 50,000-sq-ft food testing lab in Madison, Wis., checks 20% of samples for such contaminants. The lab also does nutrient U.K., 2005 Worcester analysis for food and nutritional supsauce containing chili powder plement labeling. contaminated with As international a carcinogenic red trade in food surges, azo “Sudan” dye Vasquez sees was recalled in the U.K. in 2005. opportunities to increase
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AL L FO O D P HOTOS BY SHU T T ERSTO CK
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RECALLED China is not the only country instantaneous results. where Thermo Fisher sees “It’s a goal but not yet growth opportunities. possible with existing “We are seeing a globtechnology,” he says. al wave of investment Manohar Furtado, in food testing equipa scientific fellow at ment,” Herrema instrument maker Life says. Japan has sigTechnologies, agrees nificantly improved with Greer on the testing of food imports, need for speed in PCR. particularly after the Faster results would recent scandal involvallow fresh food to ing insecticide-tainted be placed on grocery dumplings from China, shelves more quickly he notes. Investments and reduce losses due to in testing equipment are inspoilage, he says. They would U.S., 2009 & 2007 creasing in other Southeast also enable regulatory agencies to Peanuts and Asian countries and in Latin improve their monitoring of the containing America as well, he says, large- products food supply. peanut ingredients ly to certify exports but also to were recalled in the A goal of testing-equipment serve domestic needs. makers and some food processors U.S. in 2009 and peanut butter in Agilent, which claims to is to monitor food as it is prohave a major share of the food 2007 for Salmonella cessed on a factory line. Scientific contamination. chemical analysis market, instrument makers succeeded says it is gearing up to sell in developing automated more microbiological testing equipment so the equipment to food customers. Zavitsanos U.S. Postal Service could says the globalization of the food supply monitor mail for anmeans that “bacteria from the Congo or thrax spores after a Philippines are showing up in Europe and nationwide alert in the U.S.” 2001, Furtado points To offer DNA characterization of conout. He predicts that a realtaminants, “we’re bringing our expertise in time PCR method to monitor gene arrays and other life sciences technolfood for bacterial contamination on a proogies to customers in the food industry,” duction line is about two years away from Zavitsanos says. Opportunities in food are commercialization. probably not as large as those in pharma Dionex, for one, already makes a highand biotech, he acknowledges, but with performance liquid chromatography food testing growing at about 8% per year, system that food makers can install on a it is an attractive market for Agilent. production line to test for chemical contaminants. The $100,000 stainless-steel“EVERY TIME there is an outbreak, people encased instrument is “mostly used by big realize how important testing is as a commanufacturers that can’t wait for results,” ponent of food safety,” says Adam Greer, a says Deepali Mohindra, the firm’s food and technical support specialist with genotyping beverage market manager. “It’s a decent expert Idaho Technology. The firm’s polybusiness, but we’d like to see more orders.” merase chain reaction (PCR) technology It’s much more difficult to test solid and identifies Escherichia coli, Salmonella, and semisolid foods on-line than it is to test liqListeria contaminants in one day or less. uids and gases, explains Terry McMahon, Food processors typically pay contract a principal of market research publisher labs about $40 to test a sample for any one PAI Partners. On-line near-infrared and of these bacterial contaminants, Greer Raman spectroscopy instruments are now explains. But customers would like nearwidely used to monitor the quality of pet-
The volume of food recalls over the past few years “exposes how inadequate testing is on a global basis.” WWW.CEN-ONLINE.ORG
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rochemical streams. However, few such instruments are used in the food processing industry, he says. And he doesn’t see why some of the same instruments used to monitor petrochemicals couldn’t be adapted to analyzing foods and beverages for the presence of adulterants. Yoav Barshad, president of Applied Analytics, says his company supplies mainly petrochemical customers with on-line near-IR and ultraviolet spectrometers. Food processors could avoid a lot of future headaches with on-line analyzers that monitor for contaminants such as antibiotics, aromatics, and mercury, he says. For example, Perrier could have headed off a global recall of benzene-contaminated spring water in 1990 if it had had UV analyzers sampling the water at its bottling plants, Barshad says. “A lot of food industry companies are cheap,” he says. “They don’t want to create a liability, and they don’t want the on-line record or paperwork that can later be discovered in a court case.” He adds, “There is a real need for legislation to force state-of-theart on-line testing.
RECALLED We have the technology to do it.” U.S., 2008 A Experts at NSF U.S. outbreak of International, a Salmonella in 2008 food testing and was originally food plant safety thought to be due to tomatoes in salsa certification orbut was then traced ganization, say to contaminated large-scale food jalapeño peppers processors are from Mexico. both a problem and a solution when it comes to food safety. Contamination in a large facility can rapidly become a big problem and lead to recalls and widespread illness, notes Robert Prevendar, director of food safety certification there. But large facilities are also best positioned to protect the food supply, provided that they hew to a clear set of clean-handling and safety standards, Prevendar says. If such facilities also maintain clear records and have recall procedures in place, they’d be well equipped to mitigate the scope of a recall. It’s not just governments and food processors that are closely examining foodhandling and safety procedures today. Retailers want to be assured that they are
selling safe foods, too. Beginning in 2000, retailers such as Walmart, Wegman’s, and Trader Joe’s have been part of an effort with food processors and consultants to benchmark safe food-handling standards. The effort, known as the Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI), encourages food safety testing but only requires it if regulators do as well. “Testing can’t be the only tool in ensuring safer food,” says Donna Garren, food safety programs vice president for GFSI. Testing is useful, for instance, to identify excessive pesticides or dangerous pathogens when there is a concern they might be present, but other safeguards are important, too, she says. FOOD HANDLERS have to ask themselves
whether they are receiving and storing food at the right temperature, says Garren, who is a microbiologist. They have to pay attention to sanitary conditions and have a schedule to maintain plant cleanliness. They must also pay close attention to their workers’ health and hygiene to prevent food contamination. “These efforts are all part of a robust safety program,” she stresses. Walmart, for instance, requires its suppliers of produce, meat, and fish to comply with GFSI-recognized standards such as the Food Marketing Institute’s SQF 2000 food safety and certification program and the British Retail Consortium’s Global Standard for Food Safety. Garren argues that the large number of food recalls in recent years shows that “companies are doing a good job of identifying problems and recalling problematic food.” But successful recalls are little comfort to consumers. News travels quickly, and “public opinion continues to push safety concerns,” notes Zoe Grosser, food and environmental markets director for instrument maker PerkinElmer. As a result, many food processors are taking extra precautions, she points out. Some processors that “are purchasing food ingredients from China and North Africa are requiring a certificate of analysis from each supplier,” she says. Growing concern over food safety means that many large food processors are adding testing capabilities they did not have before, says Susan Steinike, HPLC product coordinator at Shimadzu. Many are modernizing equipment at older labs or adding new equipment to speed up the
process of looking at production samples. Food safety issues and the security issues that concerned people after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the U.S. have a lot in common, Thermo Fisher’s Herrema says. After Sept. 11, the government and industry made huge investments in the best available technology, ultimately leading to improved real-time capabilities to detect
chemical, biological, and explosive threats. Food processors and governments are now investing in the ability to detect more food-borne contaminants at lower detection limits than were possible just a few years ago, Herrema notes. In national security, as in food safety, he says, “the goal is real-time detection and confidence in the results.” ■
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