Food Quality Jets Into the Future

Several industry professionals representing laboratory technology vendors also foresee the future envisioned by Dr. Vasavada. Pascal Yvon, PharmD, MBA, chief executive officer for U.S. Markets of AES-Chemunex (Cranbury, N.J.), agrees that automation will play a key role, as will standardization.

“Automation is a means to standardization, which saves time and increases productivity,” he says. “To do that, you must get rid of as many steps as possible that can be influenced by the operator. We must use methods and technologies with which every operator will get results and meet objectives that are not impaired by manual work. The goal is to first reduce the number of manipulations and then ultimately be fully automated so people can push a button, walk away from the instrument, and get results.”

Increasing productivity is one of the food industry’s main concerns, Dr. Yvon emphasizes. “With more automation, you can have employees focus on more productive actions for the company, including improved customer service,” he says. “There is also a big trend to be able to provide results as quick as possible with rapid analytical methods. The goal is for food manufacturers to manage quality on a real-time basis.”

AES-Chemunex specializes in microbiological testing solutions and maintains two main divisions, traditional and rapid methods. The rapid methods division is focused on two technologies: flow cytometry to provide the total microbial count rapidly and polymerase chain reaction (PCR) to detect microorganisms both quickly and specifically. “In particular, the rapid methods market is fast growing, because that’s what the lab of the future needs and demands,” Dr. Yvon says.

“The speed to results is linked to the sensitivity of results,” he adds. “We can get results in seconds, but they are not sensitive enough. All instrument companies today are working to provide the best combination of speed and sensitivity, namely speed as quick as possible with the sensitivity as high as possible.”

Chemunex technology, with its range of flow cytometry analyzers (D-Count, BactiFlow ALS, and BactiFlow), allows labs to get total viable count results within a day, with a sensitivity of one microorganism per gram or milliliter, or results within 20 minutes, with a sensitivity around 50-100 microorganisms per gram or milliliter. (The precise sensitivity level is food product dependent.) The AES-Chemunex AdiaFood product line also offers rapid pathogen detection using its real-time PCR tools—instrument and reagent kits—and provides results within 24 hours.

“AES-Chemunex is working continuously to increase the sensitivity of microbiological testing and decrease time to results. But it is a constant battle, and our greatest challenge for the future is more and more automation with quicker results to support the HACCP (hazard analysis and critical control points) process,” Dr. Yvon says.

“You want to know right away if you can release the finished product and ship it to market, so testing must be fast, sensitive, and reliable,” Dr. Yvon adds. “But to minimize the risk of contamination, food companies should use HACCP and identify the critical control points throughout the process and monitor them. If there’s a dangerous hazard along the way, you want to know what’s going on immediately.”

And there are challenges to overcome as well, he says. “There is great financial pressure in the race for productivity and food quality. Ideally, you want to achieve both, and rapid methods have the potential to increase productivity without compromising quality.”

Automation Key to the Future

“Automation has greatly enhanced the efficiency and quality of data from laboratories,” says J. Stan Bailey, PhD, director of scientific affairs for the Industrial Diagnostics business group for bioMérieux Industry (Hazelwood, Mo.). “However, before we have full automation like the Jetsons, where you put a specimen in a container, push a button, walk away, and five minutes later have the results, we must increase the sensitivity of pathogen assays to detect one cell in 25-100 grams of food product. Otherwise, we still have to go through the enrichment step.”