Available from Hallmark Analytical Ventures, a new laboratory ELISA test kit from Diagnostic Innovations detects very low levels of lupin residues in food and its raw material commodities.
Lupin-based products such as flour and pastes are increasingly being used in baked goods and vegetarian dishes because they are high in protein, they are GM free and they can introduce a desirable yellow colour.
Annex IIIA of Directive 2000/13/EC lists the allergenic foods that have to be labelled whenever they are used in pre-packed foods, and this list includes lupin.
The new Imutest Lupin-Check ELISA kit is designed to help food manufacturers to comply with this new legislation and to provide food analysis laboratories with a detection method for lupin residues in food.
The kit is designed to be used in analytical laboratories that need to perform analyses to confirm or exclude the presence of allergen traces in foodstuffs.
The assay detects the protein fraction of lupin flour as a marker of total lupin flour content within a range of 2-30ppm or above (limit of detection <0.2ppm).
Diagnostic Innovations has also developed a credit-card-sized test format that is said to be easy to perform and simple to read and that copes with extreme ranges of allergen/gluten.
The Imutest Gluten Flowthrough (GFT) test is designed to be used in small laboratories or food companies that perform on-site gluten testing but where sample numbers do not justify the use of ELISA techniques.
Imutest GFT tests can detect gluten levels in foods down to about 10-20ppm and, in a slightly different format, Imutest Swabbing/GFT combination kits can be used to check surface/environmental swabbing solutions down to less than 1ppm, yet take as little 10 ten minutes to perform.
The presence of a pink/red spot on the left (and a procedural control spot on the right) of the test area denotes a positive result.
