The age-old problem of food product contamination still presents a major challenge for society. Most countries have been affected by food product recalls in recent times for different reasons, whether because of microbial contamination, such as the botulism scare in dairy products in New Zealand that gave Fronterra a huge fine, or as a result of product adulteration, such as in the Chinese melamine in baby food or the Irish horse meat scandal.
Since the introduction of the UK’s first Food Adulteration Act in the 1860s, the regulatory authorities have tried to counter contamination risks. New Zealand is the latest country to update its Food Safety Laws, but those of the US and EU are constantly evolving, placing more responsibility down the food chain to check for contaminants.
Stricter regulation has led not only to growth in the outsourcing of ingredient testing to specialist labs but also to the development of faster and more automated technology for testing. In the past decade developments in DNA testing and genome sequencing have become more cost effective and food testing technology is being automated for use by a greater number of less-skilled microbiologists.
It is the advent of DNA testing that has provided the ability to check that food products are actually what they say they are – horse meat labelled as beef is an example readily exposed by today’s DNA tests. But the recent allegations that some Cadbury chocolate products tested by the Malaysian Health Ministry contained pig DNA – since discounted – show that care is needed with such technology. Such testing, if positive, will not necessarily pinpoint where product contamination happened i.e. during manufacture or later during distribution.
Some microbiologists believe that the molecular technologies that enable the rapid typing, identification and characterisation of pathogens present a paradigm shift for the food industry. The ability to distinguish quickly more benign strains from those with virulent genes should prevent situations such as that of Fronterra and, most importantly, save lives.
