30 May / June 2017 How Safe is Safe?
Analytical Tools for Tracing Contaminants in Food
by Uwe Oppermann, Anja Grüning, Gesa Schad, Carola Schultz Shimadzu Europa GmbH, Albert-Hahn-Straße 6-10, D-47269 Duisburg, Germany
A growing world population up to 9.7 billion by 2050 will increase the demand for food. This will require higher crop production globally, by enhancing productivity through optimised methods, fertilisers, agrochemicals and pesticides. In order to comply with regulations on food safety, manufacturers of food and beverages must carefully control contaminants such as pesticides, mycotoxins and heavy metals. Protection against fraudulent products and improper food ingredient labelling is also essential. Analytical instrumentation technologies and methods such as mass spectrometry coupled with liquid chromatography (LC), gas chromatography (GC) and inductively coupled plasma (ICP) provide the tools to support and guarantee food safety with consumer, animal and plant protection.
Introduction
Food safety is a major concern for the European population, with many food scandals being reported in the past few years, such as the horsemeat scandal in 2013 when traces of horsemeat were found in products sold in supermarkets. Deep frozen lasagne claiming to contain beef was found with no declaration of horsemeat or improperly declared horsemeat content – whereas the actual horsemeat content was up to 100%. In another case, mineral oil and plastic parts were detected in chocolate products. In spring 2016 an environmental institute in Munich found elevated concentrations of glyphosate in beer, Europe´s favourite alcoholic beverage.
To strengthen confidence in food products the European Commission aims to assure a high level of food safety and animal & plant health within the EU through the farm-to-fork principle. This strategy implements effective system controls and evaluates compliance with EU standards as well as evaluating EU imports from third party countries.
European citizens are entitled to know how their food is produced, processed, packaged, labelled and sold. The central goal of the European Commission’s Food Safety policy is to ensure a high level of protection of human health regarding the food industry — Europe’s largest manufacturing and employment sector.
Food Control is a Fundamental Issue
Over the last century, the global population has quadrupled, in 1915, there were 1.8 billion people, today there are 7.3 billion people and by 2050 it is estimated that the world population will reach 9.7 billion. This growth, along with rising incomes in developing countries (which causes dietary changes such as eating more protein and meat) increases the global demand for food with food demand expected to grow anywhere between 59% and 98% by 2050 [1]. This will require higher crop production on a global scale by enhancing productivity through optimised methods, fertilisers, agrochemicals and pesticides.
The use of herbicides, insecticides and fungicides reduces crop losses, both before and after harvest, however, residues resulting from the use of plant protection products may pose a risk to human health and require a legislative framework to monitor food contamination. National programs for pesticide monitoring in the US, Europe and Japan have set Maximum Residue Levels (MRL’s) or tolerance information (EPA) for pesticides in food products. A default value of 0.01 mg/kg is applied for MRL enforcement, requiring highly sensitive and specific analytical
Table 1: Analytical conditions for LC and MS
Figure 1: MRM chromatograms of 646 pesticides spiked into a mint extract at 0.01 mg/kg (Up to 3 MRMs per compound and 5 msec polarity switching time).
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