Articles - Food Control

India’s food safety system is complex and continually evolving to support five million food business operators and to share responsibility for a safe global food supply.           Introduction   India is the leading global producer of a number of foods and has the potential to be the food basket of the world. Thi [...]

Russian authorities and businesses have yet to achieve a consensus on how best to improve the domestic food market laboratory testing system.     The Russian government is set to strengthen the state laboratory diagnostic system in order to ensure that all products of the Russian-origin landing on the domestic and foreign markets have suf [...]

There is a temptation - and a risk - to externalizing internal activities like laboratory diagnostics. Is an internal lab always necessary? Is an external lab always better? The answer lies somewhere in between.          Introduction   Monitoring processes for product composition, for process control and variability, o [...]

Validation of a new and novel Patulin ELISA kit   Background   The presence of toxic chemical contaminants in food, particularly those intended for children's consumption, is a matter of great concern to consumers and health authorities. Mycotoxins in food, animal feed, and beverages have been recognized as a potential threat to human and [...]

European consumers spent years unknowingly eating eggs contaminated by a banned pesticide. Was it really unpredictable? Could it happen again?     A brief history On 22 July 2017, Dutch consumers read in their newspapers that the eggs in their markets may be contaminated by a pesticide. In a few days, the alarm spread and became a Europea [...]

A perfect tool for implementing the allergen analysis as part of the food safety quality control assessment.   It is well known that food allergies are an immune system reaction to a food or a substance in food. Even a tiny amount of allergy-causing food can trigger signs and symptoms such as digestive problems, hives or swollen airways. In s [...]

New assay for measurement of gluten in oats and avoiding false negatives in the analysis of milk substitutes.     While there are many kits available for the detection of gluten from wheat, barley and rye, there has not been a reliable kit for the detection of oat prolamins until now.  ELISA Systems has recently released a kit for t [...]

An International Standard based Real-Time PCR detection portfolio.   DNA based technology is a relatively new approach for the detection of food allergens, a field traditionally dominated by immunoassays.   DNA methods are indirect methods to detect food allergens as they do not detect the allergenic protein itself, but the DNA sequences [...]

Russian scientists and environmentalists have raised concerns that some food on the grocery shelves could be contaminated with agricultural chemicals.     Abnormal bee mortality in Central Russia caused losses close to 1 trillion rubles (USD 5 billion) for farmers over the past few years according to official estimates from the Russian Na [...]

Laboratory managers can choose between plate-based reference methods or proprietary methods. Faster but often more expensive, how can we be sure proprietary methods meet or exceed reference method performance?IntroductionAnalytical methods and their performance parameters have been defined as one of the components of a microbiological criterion for [...]

How Neotron, a prominent Italian food testing laboratory, is becoming part of the growth strategy of the Swiss inspection and certification company.Cotecna Inspection SAFounded: 1974Present in: 50 countriesNumber of Laboratories/offices: 160Revenue: not providedEmployees: over 5 000Neotron SPAFounded: 1976Location: Modena, ItalyRevenue: not provide [...]

Simple devices that can be operated by non-laboratory staff are sufficiently accurate for identifying suspected non-compliant food batches. This kind of smart sampling can replace random sampling and make way for more efficient food fraud and safety controls.     The food industry goes to great lengths to ensure the safety and quality of [...]

Do method sensitivities comply with recommended allergen reference doses? The ThRAll-EFSA project is developing a tool to quantify allergens in complex foods using MS techniques for improved analytical accuracy.     The size of the food allergy problem Food allergies are a growing health burden worldwide. Although the true prevalence of f [...]

Testing food manufacturing surfaces for SARS-CoV-2 has been widely promoted during the pandemic but is this approach effective for decreasing virus transmission of the virus?     Introduction COVID-19 is not considered a foodborne illness and surface contamination is not likely a significant source of contamination. Yet, food industry pla [...]

The complexities of food fraud require an understanding of criminology to remove incentives for criminals and to create more resilient food supply chains.      Introduction Today, food fraud is regarded mainly as a food regulatory/quality issue and it is addressed with the typical approach well known to the food business: risk analys [...]