Multiple Toxin Detection Tests May Be on the Horizon

A four-year, €4 million European Commission funded project aims to develop multiple toxin detection tests for use by food manufacturers within processing plants.

The project, Conffidence, is being lead by the RIKILT Food Safety Institute in the Netherlands and involves 17 partners from ten European countries including leading food multinationals.

The project claims Professor Chris Elliott, director of the Institute of Agri-Food and Land Use at Queen’s University Belfast, will provide new ways of detecting a wide variety of chemical contaminants such as pesticides, organic pollutants, antibiotics, heavy metals, plant and natural toxins.

He said that one of the major concerns of governments, food producers and consumers is the presence of chemical contaminants in food and feed that may be harmful to our health, and, consequently, regulatory authorities and the food/feed industries spend large amounts on tests to ensure product safety.

The true effects of long term exposure to these toxins, continued Elliott, are far from clear and may present significant health risks.

He argues that many of the currently used tests to determine the presence of toxins are complicated, time-consuming and expensive, making it difficult to intervene and take corrective actions during the food production process.

“There is an urgent need for replacement of current methods by validated screening tools that are simple, inexpensive and rapid and are able to detect as many chemical contaminants in parallel as possible,” said Elliott.

Source: FoodProductionDaily.com