Food Safety

Introduction

With the improvement of people's living standard, the requirements of food safety are more demanding than ever before. However, the current situation is not optimistic, and the international food safety vicious incidents frequently occur. The residues of harmful substances in food can directly cause acute and chronic toxic, allergies and allergic reactions to human body, and also lead to direct or potential harm to human body through the role of environment chain and food chain. Therefore, legislatures of various countries have imposed strict limits on the maximum residual amount in food. In order to meet these requirements, high selectivity and high sensitivity detection technology become the research trend of today. At present, stable isotope dilution assay (SIDA) combined with LC-MS/MS has become one of the most popular methods in food safety, in which the stable isotope-labeled compounds as internal standard in this method, providing the advantages of simple, accuracy and efficiency.

Detection overview and advantages of SIDA

SIDA-LC-MS/MS uses the stable isotope-labeled compounds as internal standard (i.e., diluents), which have the same molecular structure with analyte. And then the absolute amount of analyte in the sample is obtained by accurate measurement of isotope abundance by MS spectrometry and accurate weighing of diluents.

The use of stable isotope-labeled compounds as internal standard in SIDA can avoid the influence of complex matrix effect, pretreatment and mass spectrometry detector on the results of the analytical method. It can effectively correct the errors existed in the method, significantly improving the recovery rate of target compounds and the stability of the method. And then the qualitative and quantitative accuracy of the analytical method can be greatly improved.

Applications

The SIDA method based on stable isotope-labeled compounds as internal standard can be used for the detection of multiple harmful substances in food safety. The details are as follows.

Detection of pesticide residue: Pesticide residues found in food mainly include organochlorine pesticides, organophosphorus pesticides, carbamate pesticides and pyrethroid pesticides. According to statistics, millions of people are poisoned by pesticides every year, and pesticide residues have become the focus of food safety in the world. At present, a variety of stable isotope internal standard reagents have been developed, and successfully used in the rapid and efficient detection of above pesticide residues.

Detection of veterinary drug residues: In modern animal husbandry, the illegal abuse of a large number of veterinary drugs inevitably leads to drug residues in animal products. Stable isotope-labeled compound has been widely used for detection of various veterinary drug residues such as antibiotics (chloramphenicol), coccidiostat (nitrofuran and nitroimidazole), sulfonamides and hormones (assimilation hormone, cortical hormone, and β receptor agonist). The method has the advantages of a low selectivity, high precision and fast.

Detection of food additives: The government allows the legitimate use of additives in food, but some illegal additives such as plasticizer, Sudan red, sodium formaldehyde sulfoxylate, melamine, dichlorvos and so on will be used by undesirable businessman. At the same time, some food additives are abused. SIDA method with labeled compounds as internal standard can be used for effective detection of illegal and abuse of food additives.

Detection of natural toxins: Edible animal and plant products may produce natural toxins under the action of their own bodies or other microorganisms, such as aflatoxin. This needs to be strictly monitored. The fact proved that SIDA method with stable isotope internal standard can be used for effective detection of natural toxins.

What can we do?

Alfa Chemistry has many years of experience in the synthesis and development of stable isotope- labeled products. We can provide various stable isotope-labeled internal standards for detection of pesticide residue, veterinary drug residues, food additives, natural toxins and others in food. And we also provide our customers with high-quality stable isotope compounds design and customization services. No matter what design ideas you have, we will implement them together with you. Please contact us immediately to order or cooperate in research and development with high quality and reasonable price.