Application of biosensors confirmed as key EC food consumer safety improvement project presented at European Research 2002
As the EC announces its 6th Framework Research Programme, the FoodSense project was presented at European Research 2002 as a showcase project demonstrating the success of EC 4th Framework funding.
Coordinator of the successful project, Dr Karl-Erik Hellenäs of the Swedish National Food Administration presented results showing how Biacore optical biosensor technology can improve consumer food safety.
The FoodSense project has demonstrated the applicability of Biacore's SPR (surface plasmon resonance) biosensor based technology for the high throughput analysis of potentially harmful contaminants and chemical residues in food.
Involving eight other organisations from four countries, the project was supported by the EC Programme For Agriculture And Fisheries (Fair) as part of the 4th Framework Programme.
Some veterinary medicines used to treat animals can produce residual contaminants in meat and milk products and may result in acute food poisoning, allergic reactions or development of antibiotic resistant organisms.
Few techniques have the necessary throughput, reliability, reproducibility, or sensitivity to satisfy the challenging requirements of the food industry.
However, final results from FoodSense have shown that a substantially higher daily throughput of tests (up to 650 samples/day) can be performed using SPR technology, with the capacity to rapidly detect a much wider range of residues compared to existing test methods.
Such increased performance can help regulatory authorities and food production laboratories increase food-monitoring capabilities in a variety of environments such as abattoirs and dairies.
For example, a meat factory has been able to increase testing for certain antibiotic residues from less than 0.1% of all carcasses daily to over 20% using SPR technology on-site.
"The FoodSense project has made a great step forward in the rapid detection of food contaminants to improve consumer safety," said Karl-Erik Hellenäs.
"During the project we have validated the technology in a number of very challenging food production sites and EC National Reference laboratories.
We have shown that Biacore's SPR technology really improves the reliable detection of veterinary residues and the capability of food production laboratories to assure the safety, quality and composition of food." "Combined with ready to use assay kits, our biosensor technology is extremely versatile and user friendly for routine food analyses in a non-laboratory environment," said Esa Stenberg, head of Biacore's Food Business Unit.
"Our high throughput system has been shown to achieve automated, multi-analyses on a range of important drug residues in both laboratory and industrial environments". SPR technology has also been successfully used to detect and measure illegal growth promoters in the urine of cattle, and antibiotics in the bile and tissue of pigs.
It is, in addition now under evaluation by a major European poultry producer to detect salmonella infection in poultry, a problem that may contribute to as much as 20% of human infections.
As a result of the FoodSense project a new company, XenoSense, has been formed, with the focus on implementing the scientific and technological advances made during the project.
In partnership with Biacore, the company has developed assay kits and reagents for the detection of food contaminants using SPR technology.
To date six kits are now available for the rapid analysis of sulfadiazine and sulfamethazine (sulfonamides), clenbuterol, streptomycin, ractopamine and chloramphenicol.
As a result of the widespread EC consultation on future food quality and safety research, a project entitled BioCop has been shortlisted for possible FP6 funding.
The author of this work, another FoodSense partner, Dr Chris Elliott from Queen's University, Belfast, explained, "I strongly believe the use of optical biosensors will form an integral part of many types of food assurance analysis in the coming years."
