Enrichment Time for Salmonella

By Food Safety Tech Staff
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In less than two weeks, FDA is holding a Demo Day at the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition in Maryland. The agency will be awarding $500,000 to the team that can develop a technique or technology that creates “significant improvements” in the speed at which FDA can detect Salmonella in fresh, minimally processed produce.

A few months ago, Capt. Palmer Orlandi, Ph.D., senior science advisor at FDA’s Office of Veterinary Medicine, describes exactly why FDA is offering such a hefty prize. It can take between three and five days to detect Salmonella in product, and with full serotyping, it can take as long as two to three weeks to obtain results.

FSMA Final Rules Almost Here, Guide to GFSI

By Food Safety Tech Staff
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With a host of mandatory requirements under FSMA means, businesses may want to consider GFSI certification.

The first FSMA deadlines are now two months away, and manufacturers may wonder how and where GFSI certification ties into increased regulation. First, what are some of the main differences between GFSI and FSMA? GFSI is seen as more global, while FSMA is more US-focused. Of course, the final FSMA rules will require mandatory compliance, and GFSI is voluntary. However, GFSI certification is recognized among major domestic and international retailers, so compliance with a GFSI-recognized scheme is an important part of a company’s food safety program.

The Food Safety Consortium Conference features a GFSI Services & Compliance track. With increased regulatory demands under FSMA, speakers will discuss the role of food safety certification systems. A GFSI-certified facility is one step closer to compliance with FSMA and may be held in higher regard by FDA from an auditing and inspection standpoint versus a business that has not opted to obtain certification.

Obtaining GFSI certification provides several benefits to the food industry, according to a recent TraceGains blog about the GFSI journey, including:

  • Reducing duplication of audits
  • Creating a comparable audit approach and outcomes
  • Enabling continuous improvement and customer opportunity for GFSI-benchmarked companies
  • Enhancing trade opportunities
  • Gaining cost efficiencies throughout the supply chain
  • Increasing competitiveness in the global market

Several food safety management schemes are recognized by GFSI. Among them is FSSC 22000, which touts the certification of more than 10,000 businesses worldwide. This year’s Food Safety Consortium also includes the first FSSC 22000 North American Harmonization Day on Tuesday, November 18. The meeting will provide a technical update of FSSC 22000, along with current scheme and future plans for expanding scopes and preparing for GFSI benchmarking.

House Votes to Repeal COOL for Beef, Pork and Chicken

By Maria Fontanazza
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The debate over country-of-origin labeling isn’t over yet.

In a 300-131 ruling, the House voted to pass the highly contentious COOL Amendments Act of 2015 (H.R. 2393) last week. This means that country-of-origin labeling will no longer be required for beef, pork and chicken. Consumer advocacy groups such as the Consumers Union (a division of Consumer Reports) are clearly unhappy about the passage of the bill, while industry associations such as GMA immediately applauded the decision.

“Without these changes to U.S. COOL rules, U.S. food and agricultural sectors could face financial losses in the billions when Mexico and Canada impose WTO authorized retaliatory tariffs as early as this summer,” said Denzel McGuire, executive vice president for government affairs at GMA, in a statement. “The financial impact of these tariffs will be felt even before they are implemented because the targets of these retaliatory tariffs will begin to experience a substantial drop in export sales almost immediately due to supply chain disruptions. A wide array of product categories will be impacted by these tariffs.”

On the opposing side, the Consumers Union states that the U.S. can avoid trade sanctions. According to the advocacy group, 90% of Americans surveyed want country-of-origin labeling on the meat they purchase. “No penalties have yet been accepted by the WTO, and the U.S. may still avoid trade sanctions by negotiating a settlement with Canada and Mexico,” said Jean Halloran, director of Consumers Union’s Food Policy Initiatives, in a letter sent to the House of Representatives, urging them to vote against a repeal. “Even if retaliation occurs, it is not likely to begin for many months, during which time the United States could develop and implement a solution preserving consumers’ access to country-of-origin information.  Contrary to statements made by the proponents of H.R. 2393, a settlement with our trade partners would be the true “targeted response” to the WTO ruling.”

Now it’s up to the Senate.

Does your product contain PHOs? FDA says they're not GRAS.

Partially Hydrogenated Oils Not GRAS, Says FDA

By Maria Fontanazza
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Does your product contain PHOs? FDA says they're not GRAS.

FDA has made it official. The main source of artificial trans fat in processed foods, partially hydrogenated oils (PHOs), are not generally recognized as safe (GRAS) for use in human food. The agency is giving food manufacturers three years to comply. Companies can either reformulate products without PHOs and/or petition FDA to allow specific uses.

Does your product contain PHOs? FDA says they're not GRAS.
Does your product contain PHOs? FDA says they’re not GRAS.

FDA is defining PHOs as “fats and oils that have been hydrogenated, but not to complete or near complete saturation, and with an iodine value greater than four”.

“This determination is based on extensive research into the effects of PHOs, as well as input from all stakeholders received during the public comment period,” said Susan Mayne, Ph.D., director of the FDA’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, in an FDA press release. Manufacturers have been required to indicate the presence of trans fats on product labeling since 2006. The agency estimates that between 2003 and 2012, consumption of trans fat decreased by nearly 78%, and attributes this drop to labeling requirements and consumer awareness. For the past decade, the Institute of Medicine has recommended limiting trans fat consumption.

“The FDA’s action on this major source of artificial trans fat demonstrates the agency’s commitment to the heart health of all Americans,” stated Stephen Ostroff, M.D, acting commissioner of FDA. “This action is expected to reduce coronary heart disease and prevent thousands of fatal heart attacks every year.”

After issuing its notice in November 2013 that PHOs were not GRAS, FDA received more than 6000 comments in response to this tentative determination. According to the Federal Register notice, the majority of comments from industry, trade associations, advocacy groups, health professionals, and government stakeholders were in favor of FDA’s tentative determination. Those who expressed dissent cited the agency’s scientific analysis as well as its potential effect on trade, taxes, and the potential that it could lead to bans on other substances; some provided alternatives to dealing with the issue of trans fat in food.

Scanning electron micrograph shows a colony of Salmonella typhimurium bacteria. Photo courtesy of CDC, Janice Haney Carr

State of Salmonella: Technology and Industry Trying to Reduce Rates

By Maria Fontanazza
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Scanning electron micrograph shows a colony of Salmonella typhimurium bacteria. Photo courtesy of CDC, Janice Haney Carr

By 2020, the CDC has targeted a reduction in Salmonella cases at 11.4 per 100,000 people (last year’s rate was 15.4 per 100,000). Considering that the number of cases has not declined in the past 10+ years, regulators and industry will need to work together more closely on utilizing methods and technologies that provide effective pathogen detection.

Scanning electron micrograph shows a colony of Salmonella typhimurium bacteria. Photo courtesy of CDC, Janice Haney Carr
Scanning electron micrograph shows a colony of Salmonella typhimurium bacteria. Photo courtesy of CDC, Janice Haney Carr

It is a well-known fact within the food safety industry that Salmonella is the second most common foodborne illness in the United States, and the bacteria comes in first place in the category of foodborne illnesses that lead to hospitalization or death.  Unfortunately, there has been no change in the number of confirmed infections between the 2006-2008 period and last year, according to the CDC’s Foodborne Diseases Active Surveillance Network (FoodNet) 2014 Food Safety Progress Report. 

“The major threat Salmonella poses is that its public health impact has remained largely unchanged despite many years of regulatory oversight and technological improvements,” says Evan Chaney, Ph.D., senior manager, scientific affairs at Roka Bioscience. “Reducing the existing public health burden of Salmonella is a complex challenge that will require new and innovative thought, research, and technological developments or processes.”

Each year Salmonella makes its way into the food supply through a variety of sources, sickening more than 1 million people in the United States and costing the country nearly $3.7 billion, according to the USDA. Although it is most commonly found in contaminated animal-derived products, the level of serious outbreaks over the past few years is cause for concern, as the bacteria have appeared in processed foods such as peanut butter and fresh produce, including cucumbers, cantaloupes, alfalfa sprouts and jalapeno peppers.

USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) proposed federal measures in January to lower the rate of Salmonella in poultry, including a pathogen reduction performance standard for chicken parts, and ground chicken and turkey. FSIS began the sample project for raw chicken parts in March (only for firms that produce more than 1,000 lbs of chicken parts daily) and a verification testing program for poultry carcass inspection, using a moving window of sampling results, in May (view the full Federal Register notice).

Technologies Taking Down Salmonella

Providing rapid pathogen detection for Salmonella in less than 24 hours has been a priority for industry. Companies want to both prevent contaminated foods from entering the market as well as ensure that products can be quickly tested so that they are not sitting in a warehouse for days awaiting results. With this focus comes a need to provide testing in the processing environment.

“I think we will see an increase in testing related to the Food Safety Modernization Act, and there’s a trend toward environmental testing as opposed to finished product testing,” says Meredith Sutzko, Product Manager, Food Pathogens of Romer Labs North America. “Processors are looking to identify contamination very early in the process. To do that, they need simple and cost-effective methods, especially ones that will deliver a fast time-to-result and can be used at the production facility so they don’t have to wait to obtain test results.”

From enzyme immunoassays (EIA) and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISA) to PCR assays, there are a large variety of established testing and identification technologies on the market. However, in taking a different approach to lowering the risk of Salmonella from entering the market, companies can employ limits testing as an additional tool to verify process control within a production shift. Salmonella limits testing is a semi-quantitative method that provides a “positive” or “no-go” result based on initial contamination levels of a sample, and does so within a day.

Limits testing provides a semi-quantitative approach to lowering Salmonella levels. Image courtesy of Roka Bioscience
Limits testing provides a semi-quantitative approach to lowering Salmonella levels.
Image courtesy of Roka Bioscience

“A key difference in this testing approach is the utilization of a pathogen test as a means of process control or intervention, an example of a tool utilized in a new manner,” says Chaney, adding that in most cases, pathogen testing is conducted on finished product or on lots of product in concordance with COA requirements. While it is important to provide results that indicate both qualitative (presence or absence) and quantitative (estimates concentration), having insight into actual concentration levels provides another layer of risk mitigation. “We need tools to help us understand what Salmonella loads are in the system in a rapid manner so that action can be taken. This is the purpose of limits testing.”

As a case example of limits testing being used in the field, Cargill asked Roka Bioscience to develop a limits-based approach for testing its ground turkey for Salmonella. Roka was required to provide Salmonella detection levels at about 1 CFU/g in a 375 g sample size of ground meat in less than eight hours (total time to result). Roka successfully developed the limits application, and Cargill now uses the tool to make product disposition decisions prior to shipping its ground turkey. Roka is also looking at other areas in which limits testing can be used, from the pre-harvest to live production environments.

Calling on industry to push harder to innovate in foodborne pathogen detection, FDA announced its 2014 Food Safety Challenge last fall. The agency is offering a hefty prize—$500,00—to the team that can develop a technique or technology that creates “significant improvements” in the speed at which FDA can detect Salmonella in fresh, minimally processed produce. The finalists, announced last month, have received $20,000 to further develop their concepts and are being mentored by FDA in food safety and pathogen testing.

Technology contenders for the challenge include:

  • A handheld magnetoelastic biosensor and surface-scanning detector that can be passed over food to detect surface contamination. The portable device can be used both in a process facility as well as remote locations in which produce is being harvested and delivers results in minutes, according to the team’s leader, Bryan Chin, director of the Auburn University Detection and Food Safety Center.
  • Patented high-throughput technology for capturing Salmonella in large sample volumes. Developed by UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine and scientists from Mars, Inc., the test uses fluidized bed technology to detect bacteria in less than four hours and presents potential for larger food processors. View the UC Davis video
  • DNA aptamer-magnetic bead sandwich assay, for use with a handheld florescence reader. Developers of the assay are from Pronucleotein, Inc. and Xgenex
  • Method for concentrating salmonella to detectable levels using automated microfiltration, developed by Purdue University.
  • Portable system for multiplexed detection of foodborne pathogens in microfluidic biochips through isothermal DNA amplification and electrical detection, developed by University of Illinois and Purdue University.

On July 7, FDA is holding a Demo Day at the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition in Maryland where the finalists will present their refined concepts to judges from the FDA, USDA, and CDC, and a live audience. The winner of the Food Safety Challenge will also be announced sometime next month.

SafetyChain Software

Six Steps to Getting a Handle on Cost of Quality

By Barbara Levin
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SafetyChain Software

The importance of food safety is understood and hopefully, unquestioned. It is industry’s responsibility to protect consumers and of course, a major food safety event can ruin a company’s brand and financial health.

Yet when it comes to food quality management, the complexities and overall economics of quality are often underestimated. While lapses in food safety can destroy a brand, it is the consistent adherence to food quality attributes that build brand loyalty. This is why that brand of bread always has that certain softness, or why that French fry always has the same taste regardless of where you buy it. And that is why manufacturers continue to purchase, or decide not to purchase, ingredients from certain suppliers.

Food quality management can often be more complex than food safety. Think 3 CCPs vs. 30 quality attributes, for example. And, Cost of Quality can have the biggest impact on a food company’s overall key performance indicators (KPIs), profitability and brand reputation. Non-conformances in food quality often cause the most rework and the most customer rejections, which has a significant impact on what can be referred to as the Economics of Food Quality Management.

Since most food safety and quality assurance (FSQA) operations are often “data rich and information poor” — meaning they don’t have an effective way to do trending and benchmarking on the volume of quality data they collect — it can be difficult to fully understand, and therefore reduce, Cost of Quality.

Getting a handle on Cost of Quality is a process. These six steps are a good place to start:

  • Define quality in your organization
  • Determine the right metrics for a better understanding of Cost of Quality
  • Improve transparency and visibility of your processes, products and supplier quality requirements
  • Fully understand where your quality risks come from
  • Make your quality data both accessible and actionable for continuous improvement to reduce Cost of Quality
  • Understand what tools are available, such as automation technologies, that can improve performance and lower Cost of Quality

SafetyChain is hosting a complimentary webinar, “The Economics of Food Quality Management: Understanding and Reducing Cost of Quality,” on June 25. The event features Lamont Rumbers, president and founder of Fully Integrated Quality Solutions, and former senior director of quality for Sam’s Club. Rumbers will discuss these six steps and much more. Learn more about the webinar and register.

Lab technicians use the Hunter device during a test process. InstantLabs manufactures the Hunter system as well as test kits for food pathogens and species identification such as the catfish testing commercialization agreement outlined with the FDA.

New Catfish Test Catches Mislabeling Faster

By Maria Fontanazza
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Lab technicians use the Hunter device during a test process. InstantLabs manufactures the Hunter system as well as test kits for food pathogens and species identification such as the catfish testing commercialization agreement outlined with the FDA.

As Americans seek to make healthier choices, seafood is becoming more popular than ever before. In fact, U.S. consumers eat 50% more seafood now than they did 50 years ago and spend $80 billion annually on creatures from the sea, according to Oceana. Coupled with the increasing popularity is the growing problem of seafood fraud and mislabeled imports. Oceana’s study in 2013 performed DNA testing on seafood samples taken around the United States and found that nearly 33% of those samples were mislabeled.

FDA has made a significant investment in DNA sequencing to improve its ability to detect misrepresented seafood species in interstate commerce and from other countries. “The Agency has trained and equipped eight field laboratories across the country to perform DNA testing as a matter of course for suspected cases of misbranding and for illness outbreaks due to finfish seafood, where the product’s identity needs to be confirmed,” stated Steven M. Solomon, deputy associate commissioner for regulatory affairs at FDA, before the U.S. Senate’s Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship in May. “FDA also trained analysts from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and the National Marine Fisheries Service in its new DNA-based species identification methodology.”

With some of the most common seafood choices including white fish varieties like tilapia and catfish, DNA-based testing plays a critical role in detecting mislabeling of species.  If you’re a knowledge seafood person and you get a whole fish, there’s a high likelihood you can identify it correctly,” says Steven Guterman, CEO of InstantLabs. “However, once that fish has been filleted—let’s call it a white fish—it’s almost impossible for anyone to visually correctly identify that fish. That’s where the DNA testing comes into play.”

Lab technicians use the Hunter device during a test process. InstantLabs manufactures the Hunter system as well as test kits for food pathogens and species identification such as the catfish testing commercialization agreement outlined with the FDA.
Lab technicians use the Hunter device during a test process. InstantLabs manufactures the Hunter system as well as test kits for food pathogens and species identification such as the catfish testing commercialization agreement outlined with the FDA.

InstantLabs offers a series of DNA-based seafood tests for species identification. Last week the company announced a partnership with FDA to co-develop and commercialize a new Ictalurid catfish species identification test that enables much faster sequencing of samples and at a lower cost. “I think everyone is recognizing that the current method industry uses for validation, which is to take a sample and send it out to a lab for sequencing, just takes too long,” says Guterman. There is a typical time lag of about one to two weeks from taking a sample to getting a result.

The Hunter System is a real-time PCR instrument that delivers results in a much shorter period of time. “Switching from a sequencing test to a PCR test where you’re looking for a specific target DNA and getting results on site in two hours, or in a laboratory within a day, changes the way the industry operates,” says Guterman. “It enables better enforcement, and government regulators and suppliers can do validation in a way that’s not disruptive to their normal course of business.”

FDA and InstantLabs began talking about the technology about a year ago, as both have worked closely with the University of Guelph, according to Guterman. FDA was looking for a company that would be able to commercialize a test kit for U.S. catfish, and the new partnership is part of a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) with the agency. U.S. Farm Bill legislation states that only members of the Ictaluridae family can be legally marketed as catfish within the United States.

The FDA-InstantLabs CRADA collaboration will help ensure the integrity of labeling related to U.S. catfish. The Pangasiidae species, which hails from Southeast Asia, has been increasingly mislabeled as U.S. catfish. This is not only a concern from a cost standpoint but also a safety perspective, as FDA has detected toxins in catfish that come from Asia.

The Accountability Factor in Food Safety Culture

By Maria Fontanazza
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To build an organizational culture that embraces true food safety preventive controls, give employees the autonomy to make critical decisions.

Strengthening food safety culture within a company goes beyond the quality function in raising the banner for food safety: Engagement across an organization, from human resources to maintenance to operations are essential. In a recent Q&A with Food Safety Tech, Laura Nelson, vice president of business development and professional services at Alchemy Systems, discusses how companies can train employees working on the plant floor to help them attain a level of empowerment to take an active, preventative role in food safety, as well as how to engage executive leadership in sharing and evaluating metrics.

Food Safety Tech: How does the accountability of employees play into FSMA implementation?

Laura Nelson: FSMA is going to be additive to what [companies] are doing now in some ways. When you look at FSMA, I think about formalized programs for some companies that may not have a full-blown environmental program that is managed as a preventive control. There’s a lot of training [involved], not only in executing the environmental program, but also in how you maintain your environment to prevent those microbial niches. You start to drill back from the actual protocol of environmental monitoring, and what you do when you receive a positive listeria. How can we start educating employees to be able to recognize the niche? [For example,] is it a cramped pushcart, or damage to [something] holding product where it can’t be properly cleaned? You start educating employees at the level that they can play a more preventative role [in recognizing] they need to take equipment out of commission or send it to maintenance because it can’t be cleaned. This is when we start to see a real change in the culture of a plant. People move beyond these SOPs and requirements to a much more facilitative and educational role to drive the support of some of the FSMA requirements.

The other thing I see is record keeping: There’s a big criticality in maintaining records. People maintain a lot of data now, and there’s a lot of ancillary information included. We just haven’t had the scrutiny on record keeping. The auditors will look through it and find the information they need, but it will be a different [level of] scrutiny when FDA inspectors start to look at the data out there. I think that provides a big opportunity for industry to look at how they maintain records, what they use, and how to capture it. Again, it rolls down to employees—educating them on what is a proper record.

FST: Is facilitating employee awareness and training a challenge faced by more smaller companies versus larger organizations?

Nelson: I think large and small companies face the same challenge, and that is to elevate the knowledge of their employees (they are the eyes and ears) to help them maintain your food safety programs. It goes beyond an SOP on how to clean a piece of equipment or wash their hands. It’s more of understanding the “whys” behind it so they can be line-of-sight. They’re [on the floor] 24/7; they’re the ones who see equipment getting damaged, or drips and leaks. For them to understand and recognize what kind of risk that introduces into a plant [enables them] to raise their hand to prompt some corrective action.

There are food companies out there that are looking to achieve that level of autonomy of giving employees the ability to stop a line because there’s a food safety issue. These are hourly workers that have the autonomy to do that. That’s a huge thing. If you’re able to do that, you’ve far surpassed the basic compliance of any kind of training or education. You’re really looking at an organizational culture that has embraced true food safety preventative controls program.

FST: Food Safety Culture makes the connection between employee behavior and accountability, and establishing metrics. What are your thoughts on Food Safety Culture moving forward?

Nelson: It’s very hard to monitor behaviors. It’s easier to do classroom training and check that box. [It’s the] “how-to”: How do you do that? How do you mature your food safety culture to a point where you get to that autonomy point? We know that you need to go beyond letting employees read SOPs and sign-in [sheets], and say they understand it and move on. You have to move beyond classroom training where you’re giving employees what they need to know and telling them the requirements. You have to connect those behaviors, and then monitor and observe those behaviors, and validate that you’re executing on them. Then it’s applied onto the plant floor.

Embrace the culture of helping each other. Once you’ve achieved this: if your employees are executing when you’re not looking, that’s culture. It’s integrated and something that people embrace.

We did some research on the topic and developed an iPad coaching tool that allows people to systematically gather the data, to capture and automate it. We found that supervisors appreciated it because they had something that was clear and gives them dialogue on what to say in the event that something was missed.

FST: Where should companies focus when training and educating employees to reach a stage of empowerment?

Nelson: The training needs to be at the [appropriate] education level; it needs to be in the language they that understand. [For example,] companies may be able to do a lot more with pictures to accommodate non-English speaking folks in their plant.

Employees need to be challenged and quizzed to make sure they understand the information. The training itself needs to be tied to metrics:  What are you trying to achieve as a plant and therefore [need] to train people on? This should be tied into factors such as customer complaints, quality issues, and what has a direct impact on what employees are doing or not doing, as this [leads to] much more accountability. That’s where the role of the frontline supervisor is critical. That position is absolutely key to the success of driving food safety program compliance. We have to recognize that our frontline supervisors need the skills to motivate employees and communicate effectively with them, including discussing the challenges in conflict resolution.

Elevating food safety so employees as are aware. Awareness programs have a documented advance to people trying to drive specific requirements. We’ve seen a lot of people develop awareness programs around food safety and provide the focus in the plant on key elements that people struggle with. That way, they’re able to have multiple touch points (posters, digital signage, huddle guides). This is absolutely key as we move forward: not just training, but ongoing awareness.

FST: How can companies further educate management to understand the value of food safety culture and reach a point of alignment?

Nelson: There is and can be a pretty big disconnect between executive leadership and what is going on related to food safety. When you talk about the collaboration of the team and those within the plant, you have to include your executive management team. They should understand the different activities and efforts that go into driving a food safety program in a plant. When talking about metrics and evaluating effectiveness, that data should be shared with the executive team on a routine basis so that everyone is clear on what is happening in the plant as well as the results. If the results aren’t where we want them to be, and we’re not in a continuous improvement mode, then what is it going to take to get there? That dialogue should be had.

If you don’t continue to educate your executive team on what issues you’re seeing, then you start creating a divide within the organization. That’s part of what stems from people struggling with a lack of resources and time; this disproportionate disconnect is between other activities within a plant. Communication needs to be routine; people need to be held accountable for metrics so that you’re actually tracking to them. And if you need [more] resources, it’s the perfect way to start building a case for getting additional sales, technology, programs or procedures.

Food Safety Tech’s Food Safety Culture Series

Embed Food Safety Culture. There’s No On/Off Switch

Food Safety Culture: Measure What You Treasure

Aaron Kettle is the Product Manager, Thermo Fisher

Need a Faster Sample Prep Method for Pesticide Residue Analysis? Try Accelerated Solvent Extraction

By Aaron Kettle
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Aaron Kettle is the Product Manager, Thermo Fisher

In a Q&A with Food Safety Tech, Aaron Kettle, sample preparation product manager at Thermo Fisher Scientific discusses the advantages of using accelerated solvent extraction for pesticide residue analysis and its applications in the food industry.

Food Safety Tech: What are the benefits of using accelerated solvent extraction versus other more time-consuming sample prep methods?

Aaron Kettle: It can save a considerable amount of time over techniques such as Soxhlet and sonication that are used in this industry. In addition, the amount of solvent you’re using is cut down by at least five fold using this technique. The other advantage over some of the other techniques is that it allows walk-away capability, so your samples can be loaded and you can run your methods overnight. It’s pretty much just load the buttons and walk away, and by the time you come in the next day, everything is ready for analysis.

FST: Discuss this method in the context of today’s environment as it relates to importance of detecting the presence of pesticide residue and harmful pollutants.

Kettle: It’s certainly beneficial. It doesn’t have matrix limitations so you can use it for a lot of different sample types: High-fat content samples, such as avocados, dry samples like bread and grain, and high-water content samples like tomatoes.

FST: Are there specific food applications that benefit from accelerated solvent extraction, including those in which the method is underutilized?

Kettle: I don’t think the technique has a lot of use right now for high-water content samples, such as pesticide residue extraction for tomatoes, berries, etc. That primarily has to do with the fact that historically it hasn’t worked well with these kinds of samples. However, we’ve recently released a moisture-absorbing polymer that acts to remove residual water without interfering with the extraction and recovery of the analytes. That has allowed the accelerated solvent extraction to work with these sample types. That’s an area where’s it’s being underutilized right now, primarily because it is a relatively new product release for us. It’s an area where we’d like to see adoption continue to increase.

FST: What is unique about the polymer being used in this detection method?

Kettle: It’s a proprietary mixture that will remove water content up to 85%. There are no major specifics; it will work with any kind of matrix that has water in it—fruits, berries, etc.

FST: What are the top advantages of the technology?

Kettle: The ability to remove residual water is important. It happens prior to the sample being loaded in the extraction cell. There is no limitation with high-water content samples. It mixes well with the dispersing agent, so not only can you add a dispersing agent to help solvent flow through the matrix better, you can also add the polymer to help it through water. It helps expand the capability of the accelerated solvent extraction in what it can do in the food market for pesticide extraction.

FST: What are your expections of this technology within this niche moving forward?

Kettle: We would like to see it expand and have greater awareness and acceptance for the accelerated solvent extraction in this particular area. Right now, folks are using a manual technique for these types of samples, so we’re hoping these customers will accept the walk-away automation and the flexibility that this technique will provide.

Unleashing the power of the cloud on Food Safety and Food Quality

By Food Safety Tech Staff
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SafetyChain’s FSQA Tech Talk conversation continues next week with a discussion on why cloud and mobile technologies are becoming a game changer for food safety and quality assurance (FSQA).

As part of an ongoing series that focuses on how technology is being leveraged to solve FSQA execution challenges, the next FSQA Tech Talk session’s special guest speaker will be Michele Eddy, Corporate QA Manager with UniSea.  Eddy will be sharing her experience and insight as to how realtime FSQA data, which is  available, anywhere, and at anytime, is helping to provide sales with immediate quality gradings, better manage HACCP, CAPA, and direct observations for UniSea’s pillars of sanitation,  and how the cloud is making it easier for participants in their supply chain to work together.  Eddy will also discuss use and employee adoption of mobile devices.

The session will start with SafetyChain’s Director of Technical Solutions who will discuss key benefits of the cloud on FSQA, including the ability to have realtime data proactively pushed out and acted upon,  as well as how cloud and mobile devices support FSQA transparency and visibility across the value chain. Also discussed will be common cloud misperceptions including security and employee adoption.

The speakers will be taking questions live from the audience, and FSQA attendees are encouraged to bring their IT folks to participate. Attendees who would like to see what the cloud and mobile FSQA apps look like in action, are invited to stay online after the Tech Talk for a 15 minute demo of SafetyChain’s cloud and mobile solutions. The session is being held on Tuesday, May 19 at 10:00 am PDT, and those interested in attending can visit here for more information and to register.

The FSQA Tech Talks are a part of SafetyChain’s 2015 FSQA Technology Series: “Enabling Technologies – The Food Safety & Quality Assurance Game Changer” – which includes Leadership Forums, FSQA Tech Talks and Executive Briefs. Jill Bender, SafetyChain Vice President of Marketing Communications, said, “SafetyChain has been very proactive these past several years in educating industry on key FSQA challenges such as FSMA, GFSI, cost of quality and more. Input from the thousands of people who have attended our webinar forums was that they’d also like to learn more about how their peer companies are leveraging technology to execute on these challenges – and so the 2015 FSQA Technology Series was born!” “So far more than 1,500 hundred FSQA and food company IT folks have participated in the series, and we’re very excited to continue with fabulous speakers such as Michele Eddy,” Bender continued.

To learn more about SafetyChain’s FSQA Technology series visit www.safetychain.com/2015techseries.

Upcoming FSQA Tech Talks Include:
June 23: Harnessing Cost of Quality
July 21: Conquering HACCP, HARPC and Food Safety Plan Management
Participants of this series need only sign-up once and will automatically receive notice of the next topic and login/call information.  Register here for this complimentary series.