Spotlight put on authenticity as new research targets contaminants
Contamination of highly processed foods with meat proteins or genetically modified organisms (GMOs) that shouldn’t be there could be more readily picked up in the future, if research into a new testing method proves successful.
The Food Standards Agency has just awarded funding in excess of £1m for three new research projects to Royal Holloway, University of London, to investigate the use of mass spectrometry to check the authenticity of processed foods. The projects will investigate whether this analytical technique is faster, more accurate and cheaper than more conventional DNA analysis, which can have drawbacks when testing processed foods.
The first of two projects, each lasting two years and just about to start, will look at using mass spectrometry to determine different protein species in mixed meat products. The second will examine its use in identifying mechanically recovered and mechanically separated meat in processed foods by looking for small molecules of bone rather than the more conventional visual microscopy. And the third, three-year project starting in March, will evaluate the identification and quantification of GM proteins in food below the current thresholds for labelling.
Improving the sensitivity of detecting pork and beef, for example, in meat products where they are not labelled, could have significant implications for manufacturers of food bought by individuals with specific dietary preferences, such as those from certain religious groups. Also, the availability of more accurate and easier detection methods for GMOs at lower levels than currently possible, could lead legislators to lower the permissible levels of adventitious GMOs in foods.
Professor Peter Bramley, director of research and head of chemical and bioanalytical sciences in the School of Biological Sciences at Royal Holloway, said: “One of the difficulties [with DNA analysis] is that if you take processed food, the DNA can be broken down, so you can’t detect the sequence you are looking for. Or if, for example, it is a very oily product, the DNA is often absent.”
While stressing his role was to improve the science behind detection of such contaminants, Bramley conceded that the 0.9% limit for labelling products with approved adventitious GMO content (the level is lower at 0.5% for non-approved GMOs) was “arbitrary”. He said: “As we improve detection procedures, then obviously you start to look at the threshold levels.”
The FSA is holding a free seminar on its authenticity research programme on February 23, for details ehgu.ubqtfba@sbbqfgnaqneqf.tfv.tbi.hx
