What will Help Food Manufacturers Fight Food Fraud: 2 key Technologies

Food fraud and recalls can harm the food supply and consumer confidence. What should food manufacturers do to prevent it?

FREMONT, CA: Food fraud has been shared for decades in the food industry. Modern-day events proceed to thrust food into people’s eyes. The prime example is the horsemeat scandal in the UK in 2013.

The most regular targets for food fraud include honey, olive oil, fruit juices, alcohol, seafood, also seafood. In the case of seafood, fraud can take place by employing mislabeling.

Overcoming food fraud requires a lot of understanding and knowledge about food products. This needs a comprehensive analytical characterization to discern and quantify potential adulterations in food products.

Unveiling contamination with IR spectroscopy

IR (Infrared) spectroscopy is the most extensively used technique for illuminating contamination in food items. It is quick and affordable and gives scientists the evidence to unveil and identify the content of multiple food products.

It quickly delivers a detailed sample spectrum to the users that are later analyzed for information.

There is a necessity for a robust IR instrument and corresponding software for assessing the resulting spectra to identify food fraud. A primary example is PerkinElmer’s Adulterant Screen software, which indicates contamination to scientists. The software compares a different sample with the spectrum of a known pure sample from a library.

IR spectroscopy tests can identify and quantify the existence of various oils in a contaminated sample as every edible oil have the same molecular backbone so all infrared spectra will be similar. Once the adulterant is detected, the contaminant can be quantified by comparing the sample oil blend with known mixtures.

Detecting ultra-low concentration adulterants with mass spectrometry

In a few cases, solely using IR spectroscopy for detection purposes is insufficient. Sometimes, there is a requirement for more sensitive techniques for uncovering ultra-low concentration compounds like biomarkers or trace-level contaminants.

Mass spectrometry is powerful analytical tool that identifies compounds existing in concentrations as low as parts per billion. Generally, liquid chromatography is paired with tandem mass spectrometry in food analysis. Here, chromatography differentiates analytes before their detection and analysis through mass spectrometry.

Another best example that can be taken to demonstrate mass spectrometry analysis is pork identification. A beneficial technique to rectify pork in products is identifying particular meat peptides and biomarkers different from pork meat. However, biomarkers need ultra-sensitive information to place in an intricate meat sample.

Food fraud is rising every day; food manufacturers must use IR spectroscopy and mass spectrometry to successfully detect unknown contaminants, avoid food fraud, and enhance food quality for people across the world.