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Organised by Food Innovation (Product and Packaging) SIG
Are you responsible for commissioning analytical testing for your company? Do you know what questions to ask of your laboratory?
Food analysis is the discipline dealing with the development, study and application of analytical procedures for characterising the properties of foods and their constituents. This helps to ensure that food is consistently safe, nutritious, delicious and authentic and to prevent economic fraud. It also enables consumers to make informed choices about the food they eat.
The Food Analysis for non-analysts webinar reviews the basic principles behind the analytical procedures commonly used to test foods in the food industry including food manufacture, ingredient supply and retail. The aim is not to focus on all the different tests or how they should be undertaken, but to provide a practical guide for food factory teams who commission analytical work plus giving an overview.
In addition, the webinar will bring together experts from three Food Authenticity Centres of Expertise who will describe analytical innovations (DNA sequencing for speciation, imaging techniques for food authenticity and techniques for herb & spice authenticity) that have practical applications in the food industry.
What participants will learn about: This webinar reviews the basic principles behind the analytical procedures commonly used to test foods in the food industry including food manufacture, ingredient supply and retail. The aim is not to focus on all the different tests or how they should be undertaken, but to provide a practical guide for food factory teams who commission analytical work plus giving an over. In addition, the webinar will bring together experts from three leading laboratories who will describe analytical innovations that have practical applications in the food industry.
Target audience: Anyone in the food industry required to specify or commission and interpret food analysis results from contract and external laboratories ( technologists, technical managers, technical directors)
Chair: Selvarani Elahi, MBE, UK Deputy Government Chemist
Selvarani has over 25 years’ experience in the analysis of food and agriculture samples working across a variety of policy areas, with government departments and different stakeholder groups, to improve standards in measurement science. Selvarani is the Executive Director of the Food Authenticity Network (www.foodauthenticity.global), led by LGC, which is an open access website that gathers information on food authenticity testing, food fraud mitigation and food supply chain integrity helping to build more resilient food supply chains.
Selvarani is a fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry and IFST. In October 2020, Selvarani was awarded an MBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List 2020 for services to food measurement services.
Chair/Speaker: Sterling Crew, President Elect IFST and Chair of the Food Authenticity Network (FAN) Advisory Board
Presentation title: “Food analysis for non-analysts”
Sterling Crew is President Elect of the Institute of Food Science and Technology and Chair of the Food Authenticity Network. He currently holds a portfolio of board appointments in the food sector. Sterling’s 35 years of experience as a regulator, retailer, brand owner and food manufacturer has given him a unique perspective of the challenges of food safety and governance in the global food supply network.
He is widely published and this webinar is based on one of his papers.
Speaker: Dr Malcolm Burns, Food Authenticity Centre of Expertise, LGC .png)
Presentation title: “Seeing is (not always) believing . . multispectral imaging (MSI) for food screening”
Malcolm is a Principal Scientist at LGC in Teddington (UK). He has over twenty years’ post-doctoral experience as a molecular biologist and is the manager for the UK National Reference Laboratory for GMOs in Food and Feed. He has extensive experience in developing and validating authenticity testing methods both at national and international level. Malcolm leads a team of specialist food scientists at LGC and has published over 60 peer reviewed papers and EU guidance notes on food authenticity, GMO quantitation, method validation and estimation of measurement uncertainty.
Speaker: Dr Christophe Noel,Health & Nutrition Innovation Director, SGS United Kingdom
Presentation title: “Next Generation Sequencing: Next Generation Solutions … and Challenges.”
The introduction of Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) to the Food Industry brings new perspectives and solutions by revolutionising testing methods and approaches to investigation, and as always the case, with new applications in speciation and authentication to bacterial whole genome sequences comes new challenges!
Dr Christophe Noel has over 15 years experience in Food testing Industry; his academic research, focused on Molecular Biology and Phylogeny in Parasitology-Protistology at the Institut Pasteur has been the perfect catalyst for knowledge transfer in food testing with developing interest in technologies like MLSTs to WGS and Metagenomics. Leading in developing and managing bespoke research projects, incident investigation, and new methods with implementation to ISO 17025 accreditation level.
Speaker: Dr Terry McGrath, Food Authenticity Centre of Expertise, Queens University Belfast (Bia Analytical)
Presentation title: “Spectroscopy and Chemometrics for authenticity analysis. What does that mean!?”
Spectroscopy and Chemometric analysis are becoming of age in authenticity analysis. For many people these are just words. This short presentation will provide a basic background understanding and aim to simplify the jargon revealing what can and cant be achieved with this technique.
Terry McGrath is a founder and CTO of Bia Analytical. Terry is passionate about detecting food fraud. Before joining the company full time, Terry was a Research Fellow in IGFS at Queen’s University Belfast where his latest research was developing spectroscopic methods, both laboratory based and field deployable, in conjunction with chemometric models to detect food fraud. This research aimed at supporting the food industry to detect food fraud/adulteration in a way that would allow them to increase efficiency and protect consumers from unsafe food. Terry has more than 20 years’ experience working on food safety, security and authenticity from both a commercial and academic perspective. From 1997-2001 Terry was employed by Precision Analysis, an ISO 17025 accredited laboratory, where he was involved in agri-food testing and development of the laboratory portfolio of accredited methods as well as the development, maintenance and transfer of near Infrared spectroscopic models for proximate analysis of animal feeds and raw materials. From 2001 to 2009 he was employed by a newly launched university start-up company where he was involved in new product development including method validation, sample preparation, project management and marketing activities. Terry returned to university in 2009 to undertake his PhD and remained a Research Fellow since completing his thesis in 2012 until he joined Bia Analytical.
Live Q&A: Selvarani Elahi, Sterling Crew, Dr Malcolm Burns, Dr Christophe Noel and Dr Terry McGrath
Webinar is based on https://ifst.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/fsat.3603_12.x