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Shimadzu organises food safety seminar for food testing labs in Mumbai
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Tuesday, 30 October, 2018, 08 : 00 AM [IST]
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Anurag More, Mumbai
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Shimadzu Analytical India, in association with AOAC International (India Section), organised food safety seminar for testing laboratories in Mumbai recently. Niladri Sekhar Chatterjee, scientist, Central Institute of Fisheries Technology, made a presentation on Advanced mass spectrometry and spectroscopic techniques in ensuring safety and integrity of the global food supply chain. He said, “The European Commission has asked for the revision of EC/2002/657, and it is going the SANTE way.”
He also mentioned about complete fish supply chain, chemical contaminants in it, target list versus non-targeted screening. The important issues that are being addressed are parameters for new mass techniques, the definition of high resolution mass spectrometer, the criteria for ION ratio and retention time deviation.
Chatterjee also spoke about the advantages of HRMS techniques and the possibility of adding a retrospective search. It has higher resolving powers, better mass accuracy and more stability of the system.
He also mentioned the benefits of OMICS technologies, HRMS and ambient mass spectrometer. OMICS technologies is hugely significant for food fraud. Genomics is the preferred approach for fish fraud.
Chatterjee also spoke about long sample preparation, multiple reaction monitoring of selected markers in LCMS/MS and miniature spectrometers in food authentication.
Erich Leitner, head, Institute of Analytical Chemistry and Food Chemistry, Graz University for Technology, Austria, made a presentation on key aspects to enhance food testing in labs. He spoke about general EU food law, stating, “European citizens need to have access to safe and wholesome food of the highest standard. Controlling the safety of the agri food chain is important and the control check for harmony, chemical residues, labelling, Rapid Alert System food and feed.”
He also spoke on overall migration limit (OML), specific migration limit (SML), the European Union food cube for risk assessment, the target analyst wheel, non-intentionally added substances (NIAS) and possible analysis strategy.
S K Saxena, director, Export Inspection Council of India, said, “As per the World Trade Organization (WTO), the import of food and agriculture is easier in India, whereas exports from India is difficult.”
“In 2017-18 we exported agriculture and food products worth $30 billion. The issues faced are the authenticity of the product and the origin of the product. Another challenge is that when seafood is processed, it is difficult to certify for exports,” he added.
“Honey grown in 2017-18 was 75,000 metric tonne. There was an issue in exporting it. Certifying it of Indian origin was a challenge. In 2017-18, we exported basmati rice worth $6 billion, and in 2018-19, it is expected to reduce because of the cyclone. As a regulator, we are dependent on laboratories. Labs are the backbone for us,” Saxena said.
Anoop A Krishnan, assistant director (technical), Export Inspection Agency, Kochi, made a presentation titled Rice export testing-challenges and opportunities.
He said, “India ranks second in the production of rice after China. India produces 60 per cent of world's basmati rice and accounts for 80 per cent of EU’s imports. The challenges faced are EU testing requirements of pesticides in rice; tricyclazole (because of it, basmati rice was going to be banned).”
Krishnan mentioned the changing regulations, the lack of harmonisation of standards across countries, the changing analytical requirements in the EU and the differences in world legislation. In 2018, trycycazole, triazaphos and carbendazim were detected.
He also spoke about inorganic arsenic in rice. The methods for analysis for total arsenic are appropriate. Inorganic arsenic in rice using hydride generation AAS (method published in AOAC International, Saxena et al, 2017, EI).
He said that the approved varieties of rice in EU are Basmati 370 and basmati 386 (Indi) Type-3 (Dhradu) and mentioned challenges such as genetically-modified (GM). No GM rice is cultivated officially worldwide.
The objective of geographical origin-rice is to classify the different rice samples into their respective regions by Canonical Discriminant Analysis (CDA). Another challenge is rice authenticity- false declaration of geographical origin.
He spoke about the challenges arising from food authencity issues. The reduced confidence of the consumer, health concerns and difficulty in the sale of authentic products.
Jitendra Kelkar, general manager, Shimadzu Analytical (I) Pvt Ltd made a presentation of Shimadzu’s QuEChAR solutions for food testing.
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