Editorial Article: FERA Takes Analysis from the Laboratory to the Benchtop

SelectScience® spoke to Dr James Donarski, The Food and Environment Research Agency (FERA), at RAFA

With food safety testing and routine analysis increasingly carried out by manufacturers themselves, it is very important that you can have the same confidence in the data – and that’s where FERA come in. SelectScience spoke to Dr James Donarski, the Head of Food Authenticity at FERA, about how his research is enabling this transition.

At FERA, Dr Donarski explained, “we use different technologies, from high resolution mass spectrometry to high field NMR spectroscopy, which are incredibly powerful but are also very large”, with some instruments coming in at over 8 feet tall. “They require dedicated staff and liquid nitrogen and helium, and aren’t something you could use in a commercial environment.” However, NMR is an important tool in food testing and confirming authenticity due to the minimal sample preparation, calibration and measurement time required.

Bringing power to the benchtop

“It's important to have a small instrument so you can do your testing on site”, revealed Dr Donarski, and the instrument FERA is using in their method transfer research is the picoSpin™ 80 NMR Spectrometer from Thermo Fisher Scientific. “We can see this being used as an instrument for confirming product specification” Dr Donarski explained, ideal for “routine analysis to be conducted by a non-expert user”.

Discover more news and innovations from RAFA 2015 by visiting our video homepage. Plus, find out more about food safety and authentication testing on our community page.

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