Smaller, Stronger, Faster Labs

Testing for oxygen within a package requires a headspace analyzer. Mocon’s device is the recently upgraded Pac Check Model 450 EC; EC is the upgrade. “That’s electro-chemical. It ensures accuracy while at the same time bringing down costs,” Shema said.

Far more futuristic is the recently launched OpTech 02Platinum. “This is a nondestructive O2 analyzer. With Pac Check, the package had to be pierced. With OpTech, there is a little platinum target, or dot, that you can actually place inside the package,” Shema said. In the presence of oxygen, the platinum chemistry of the dot produces a detectable fluorescence. “It’s portable, and it looks like the scanner gun you see in stores.”

Small Molecule Detection

Mass spectrometry is king of the small molecule domain, with future innovations focused on tweaks to the overall approach. One of the biggest challenges has been the identification of an unknown; for example, who was really looking for melamine when it was detected? The recently introduced Exactive, a benchtop liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS) system by Thermo Fisher, highlighted in these pages last January, was designed to do just that. Exactive is finding its niche, often coupled with other separation techniques. At September’s AOAC meeting, Milena Zachariasova, of the Czech Republic’s Institute of Chemical Technology, used Exactive coupled with TurboFlow technology to resolve unknown mycotoxins in beer.

The Thermo Scientific Exactive is a powerful benchtop LC/MS system offering unmatched high resolution, accurate mass, and fast scanning capabilities.

“You can take a pretty dirty sample, and as long as there are no actual particles in it, inject it into the TurboFlow column,” said Yolanda Fintschenko, PhD, manager of food safety technologies at Thermo Fisher. Because of the flow, the big molecules, proteins, and carbohydrates pass through the system, while smaller molecules diffuse quickly into the packing material and are retained on the column. “Then you switch solvent and elute the fraction you’re interested in, the residue. That can eliminate a lot of complicated steps.” Dr. Fintschenko said that customers report a reduction in running time for sample prep from five hours to about 30 minutes.

Paul Zavitsanos, worldwide food industry manager for the mass spec instrument maker Agilent, said he is concerned with placing high tech tools in the increasingly low tech environments of end product testing. “Frankly, you don’t need a stack of PhDs to run these tests. In this day and age, an Agilent person comes in and sets up the equipment, and all you have to do is learn how to press the start/run button.” The problem arises in the interpretation of the results.

Food safety is a continuously moving target, with new metabolites, new impurities, new contaminants, and new varieties of foods. “So what kind of skill is required, and how can we move that level of skill throughout the global environment to allow people to modify existing methods? That’s the challenge,” Zavitsanos said.

Increasing attention is also being directed at the nutritional content of food. “How much fat is there? Does it contain lycopene? Customers want to know these things now,” he said. Agilent has just released a new protocol for its 1290 Infinity LC System that will help identify fat-soluble vitamins.

The Agilent 7000 Quadrupole GC/MS/MS provides high sensitivity detection of volatile compounds and other compounds that can be converted to semi-volatile derivatives in food.

Prevention of Problems

Pending legislation sponsored by Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) will, if passed, greatly enhance the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) authority to ensure food safety. “Things are looking very good for improvements in the system,” said David Plunkett, senior staff attorney at the Center for Science in the Public Interest. The aim is to put the power back on the consumer’s side.