The total worldwide expense for food testing is estimated in the order magnitude of 20 billion € (2019) and it is still growing with a rate of 5-10% per year. Large part of this is due to the analytical services purchased by the food and feed industries, often sold in bundle with a support for risk assessment and regulatory issues. Part of this business is made by analytical instrumentation and an even much smaller part by the so called “rapid methods” business (test kits).
Because of frequent outbreaks of pathogens like Listeria or Salmonella as well as recall for mycotoxins, pesticides, adulteration, the competent authorities have to maintain a strict monitoring system and perform many verification tests. Food traders, industries and retailers must keep in place a strict control of the raw materials, perform accurate validation of the cleaning procedures as well as test for the presence of contaminants or undeclared components in the finished products.
Multinational food companies control a large part of the food business, but still the majority of food sold all over the world, even in the developed countries, is processed in Small Medium Enterprises (SME). Such smaller companies hardly have a laboratory and generally just performed sampling and give all the sample to a local testing lab. All SMEs have some support to implement HACCP, but they often miss the time and knowledges to deeply understand all the risks linked to their productions. Rarely they are able to keep in place a chemical laboratory to test chemical contaminants or check for potential adulteration, even a screening method like ELISA is sometimes performed without the right training.
Our mission is to support Food Business owner and Food Quality / Safety managers, especially SMEs, in having in place the best preventive controls for risk managements. Advice about the different analytical technologies, support in order to choose which test can be performed in house and which test should be outsourced, considering the production process and the human resources available.
The way we provide our support are:
– Information about the food safety issue, including regulatory (Affidia Journal)
– Advice for planning the analytical controls in your business (Analytical advice)
– Support to choose the right suppliers / Partners (Food Test Compass)