This assay line for food safety focuses on detecting undesired substances in food products that are harmful or even toxic including antibiotics which are often used in livestock breeding. In contrast, other undesired substances such as mycotoxins are secondary metabolites of different molds. Commodities stored in inappropriate storage conditions can allow mycotoxins to exponentially increase potentially reaching levels that would render those commodities unusable.

Another important aspect of food safety is that food products may be contaminated by allergens. Allergens frequently occur due to the automated high throughput processes of the modern food industry that uses the same processing line for multiple products during manufacturing and packaging. Contamination of food products by allergens are known to pose a serious risk to allergy-sensitive individuals since even small amounts of such allergens may cause severe illness or even an anaphylactic shock. Both, the European Union as well as the Food and Drug Administration, now require the food industry to label their products if certain allergens are present in their products – even if the allergens occur only in trace amounts.

By using our food analytic ELISA solutions for food safety it is possible to determine concentrations of various undesired substances including allergens in different food matrices.

The quality of a food product for human consumption can to some extent already be assessed by its general appearance, freshness and taste. However, quantifying the content of nutritive substances in food products, for example vitamins, is difficult and often requires expensive and time consuming analytical procedures. Because vitamins are essential for humans, food products are frequently enriched or fortified with certain vitamins and other additives for supporting a balanced and healthy diet of the consumer. For manufacturers and certified laboratories it is therefore important to have tools available for a precise and cost effective determination of the actual vitamin content in food products and dietary supplements. If you are interested in learning more, please view our various food analytic assay portfolio for performing such measurements.