1 As Bia Analytical commemorates its first year of operation, Dr. Maeve Shannon provides an overview of a normal day in the lab located in Northern Ireland.
Food adulteration, in particular, and food fraud are major concerns. Food fraud is thought to cost the UK food and beverage industry up to £12 billion annually. Foods including grains, coffee, wine, honey, herbs, and spices, as well as fish, are some of the most vulnerable to fraud. Production, consumption, and surveillance still have gaps that might be exploited by scammers. Thus, how can you be certain that the food you’re eating is authentic? The expertise of Bia Analytical in food authenticity testing might help to resolve this conundrum.
Launched in April of last year, Bia Analytical is a spin-out of Queen’s University Belfast’s Institute for Global Food Security. It received successful seed funding at the beginning of 2020. However, the COVID-19 epidemic presented us with a number of difficulties, just like it did for many other companies. We certainly would have liked the stability and comfort of staying a little bit longer, to use the analogy of fledgling birds leaving the nest. Nevertheless, we are now celebrating one year since returning to our lab, despite the circumstances. The group has now finished developing ten additional authenticity tests for the following herbs: coriander, white pepper, cumin, ginger, black pepper, turmeric, sage, paprika, oregano, and garlic.
2 A typical lab day
A typical day at Bia Analytical, for me, includes running samples both for method building and for authenticity testing of customer samples. As a young company, in order to thrive we need to increase our testing portfolio. Therefore, a large part of my time is spent on the research and development of new products to help meet the needs of the herbs and spice industry as this is our first target market segment – others will follow.
Our small team collaborates to address the day-to-day challenges of starting a new business. Some of the things we do together include discussing potential adulterants to consider for developing our tests and methods of obtaining them, deciding on our next product developments, and participating in daily brainstorming sessions to address any issues in data analysis. We use a highly “all hands on deck” strategy that helps us accomplish our objectives and move the company forward.
Working directly with herb and spice firms to get the materials needed to develop our methodologies is an essential aspect of my job, and we value these connections greatly. Building chemometric models and analyzing hundreds of known legitimate samples from throughout the world—as well as many of their known possible adulterants—take up a large portion of my work. Then, since our test aims to detect economically motivated adulteration (EMA), I validate the models by testing both known authentic samples and adulterated samples, many of which we spike with known adulterants, usually starting from 10 percent. We can evaluate the robustness of the models we develop through the validation process, and we only include the best in our product line.
3 Genuineness findings at Bia Analytical
Our organization offers authenticity testing services, and this evidence of authenticity is frequently included in a customer’s product requirements or even in their positive release testing. Our clients need their answers quickly, therefore we always give their samples top priority and offer a three-working-day return time guarantee to help businesses make decisions and keep faith in their offerings.
Positive and negative controls are usually included when testing client samples. This guarantees that I am aware of the accuracy of the analysis. In order to measure our performance against others in the field and ensure that our techniques are appropriate for the job, we also take part in proficiency testing programs. We are pleased to disseminate our findings widely and take pride in our competence testing record.
Every time, we give our clients a certificate of analysis that clearly shows the authenticity of the product. When a sample is marked as “Authentic,” it means that it falls into the cluster of real data in our model. This indicates that it does not differ in any way from the hundreds of real samples that we have compared it to. When a sample does not match the real herb or spice cluster in our model, it receives a “Non-Compliant” result.
Since identifying individual adulterant components would be a time-consuming and highly expensive procedure, our tests are not targeted. For instance, even if the sample contains flour or wasted material, if you utilized a test to detect lead chromate to assess the authenticity of turmeric, you would get an authentic result if lead chromate was missing. To be sure, you would need to conduct thorough testing on each probable adulterant. Conventional DNA testing cannot determine whether highly processed flour or wasted material—which has the exact same DNA as real turmeric—is present because the DNA has been too thoroughly broken down. Since we are comparing the sample to what is considered “normal,” this is a crucial differential.
We attempt to provide customers with an indicative result in the event of a non-compliant result, although this may not always be feasible due to the adulterant’s likely exclusion from the model. Finding out that the sample is obviously different from “normal” is the crucial result. Customers can take advantage of this to investigate further and follow up. If they would like, we can help further or might suggest colleagues who can.
We are currently working on acquiring accreditation to cover all of our lab-based procedures. Our oregano and sage methods currently hold ISO17025 accreditation. We use the same level of rigor and procedures in these non-accredited ways in the interim. Since our models are maintained “live,” I will be able to adapt them to new seasons and the discovery of adulterants, ensuring that “normal” stays normal.
Spectroscopy and chemometric modeling are used in all of my techniques. Chemometrics is used to create authenticity models and compare unknown sample data to a model. Spectroscopy is used to monitor the sample’s interaction with a certain type of light, allowing us to obtain sample data or fingerprints. When combined, they can be an effective weapon in the battle against food fraud. You may call me prejudiced, but I think our tests are the future of authenticity testing, not just for the herbs and spices industry.