A food testing laboratory is a laboratory for testing food, food additives, and food-related products.

According to the different design and construction requirements of laboratory buildings, the engineers of NOKI, food testing laboratories generally include three categories: enterprise laboratories, third-party testing laboratories, and government regulatory laboratories.

What instruments to choose for an enterprise food testing laboratory?

Enterprise laboratories can be set up according to the variety of products produced, the number of testing items, and the size of the production scale, laboratory equipmentconfiguration can also be complex and can be simplified.

For such a laboratory, Norfund suggests that the configuration of instruments and equipment to meet the enterprise's product quality testing can be.

Food inspection can be divided into two categories, one is to test the quality of the product; the other is to test the hygiene of the product. This type of project is more difficult to inspect and requires higher investment.

1. Quality items include moisture, salt, sugar, protein content, fat content, fiber content, vitamin content, acidity, etc.

For the testing of these items, if the funds are limited, chemical analysis can be used, only the simplest high-temperature drying oven, water bath, electric furnace, stirrer, grinder, pH meter, and other equipment can be configured.

If sufficient funds or test batches are larger, the corresponding test items have the corresponding special instruments available for purchase.

In addition, there are some general instruments available for purchase, such as UV / visible spectrophotometer, near-infrared analyzer, automatic titrator, etc. Detection of vitamins A, E, etc. sometimes needs to be equipped with a fluorescence photometer.

Detection of nutrients, such as calcium, zinc, iron, etc., can be purchased atomic absorption spectrometer-flame detector.

2. Health projects include microorganisms, additives, harmful elements, pesticide residues, veterinary drug residues, toxins, etc.

General food enterprises should build a microbiological testing laboratory.

a. Microbiology

The establishment of a microbiology laboratory should be arranged following the requirements of the biological laboratory specifications. The necessary equipment, including clean benches, incubators, electric furnaces, autoclaves, etc.

Other equipment is configured according to the specific test items. Less money can buy domestic, more money can consider buying imported. The price difference between the two is huge.

b. Additives and harmful elements

Some projects can use chemical methods, such as nitrite, sulfur dioxide, heavy metal content, total arsenic, etc. However, to meet the current national food hygiene requirements, gas chromatography - hydrogen flame detector, liquid chromatography - ultraviolet / should be purchased as a visible light detector, so that commonly used preservatives (benzoic acid, sorbic acid, etc.), sweeteners (sweetener, sodium saccharin, etc.), pigments (lemon yellow, carmine, etc.) can be detected.

Purchase atomic absorption spectrometer - graphite furnace detector can detect lead, chromium, cadmium, copper, nickel, and other harmful elements, but also need an atomic fluorescence spectrometer to detect arsenic and mercury.

c.Pesticide residues

Gas chromatography detection of pesticide residues is essential. Detection of organochlorine pesticides, the need for electron capture ECD detector; detection of organophosphorus pesticides, the need for flame photometric FPD detector or nitrogen phosphorus NPD detector.

Nowadays, there are more and more pesticide residue detection items, in order to improve the versatility, it is recommended to configure the capillary column split/non-split inlet and install the capillary column.

Compared with the traditionally filled column chromatography column, capillary column analysis items, and good separation, can reduce the frequent replacement of the column, and improve the analysis efficiency. Export food processing enterprises produce more and more products that require pesticide residue testing.

In order to control the quality of raw materials and products, the gas chromatograph-mass spectrometer can be configured.

Generally, only an electron bombardment EI source needs to be configured.

If necessary, a negative chemical NCI source can be configured. Whether you choose quadrupole mass spectrometry or ion trap mass spectrometry, I personally think it is possible, both instruments have their own advantages and disadvantages. Still depends on the specific work.

d. Residual veterinary drugs if residual veterinary drug detection, not many items, many batches, you can consider the enzyme-linked immunoassay analyzer.

The use of ELISA also has some disadvantages.

First, the kit is a long-term consumable. If the number of batches tested is small, the cost will be higher. Secondly, the specificity is not good and there may be false positives. Finally, there are many time detection items, and the cost is even higher than the instrumental analysis.

For export food enterprises with a certain scale, in order to meet the current requirements of detection limits of developed countries such as the EU, USA, and Japan, it is better to configure a liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometer.

The first instrument is recommended to be equipped with a triple quadrupole mass spectrometer with high sensitivity and good reproducibility. The instrument does not have to pursue high configuration, it is enough, but the sensitivity, stability, anti-pollution, and other performance are better.

It is best to buy for multi-family models, there is a user group with their own test items similar. First of all, it shows that the model of the instrument and the project to be tested is not a problem, and secondly, it facilitate future technical exchanges.

What instruments do third-party testing laboratories use in food testing?

Compared with enterprise laboratories, commercial laboratories test more goods and items than enterprises, so the configuration of equipment and equipment should be compared in terms of categories and quantities. Enterprise laboratories are more complete.

The configuration of instruments and equipment should not only meet the current needs of testing but also be appropriately advanced. Otherwise, it will be difficult to find customers when they come to the door and are pushed away by you.

(1) testing quality items usually need to consider the standards used or configure the appropriate testing instruments and equipment according to customer requirements.

As different goods and different customers may propose different testing standards or methods for the same project, for the detection of these items, if the method provides for chemical analysis, only the simplest equipment can be configured.

If sufficient funds or test batches, and the corresponding detection methods have instrumentation methods, you can configure the corresponding special instruments, such as moisture tester, Kjeldahl nitrogen tester, rapid fat tester, sugar meter, viscometer, fatty acid analyzer, etc.

If needed, you can also configure special analyzers such as an amino acid analyzer.

(2) I personally believe that liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry are indispensable for modern commercial laboratories. These are the conditions banned by pesticide and veterinary drug residues required by directives and standards that issue positive reports.

If there are balances and more tests, each instrument should also be equipped with more than one set. This is to consider the complementarity of instrument performance, such as a liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry, with a spray ionization source, one with atmospheric pressure chemical ionization source; a gas chromatography-mass spectrometer equipped with an electron bombardment source, or a negative chemical ionization source.

If there are more elements and the sample has impurities, the configuration of plasma emission spectrometer-mass spectrometer, gas chromatograph-tandem mass spectrometer, etc. can also be considered. If the morphological analysis is to be performed, the plasma emission spectrometer-mass spectrometer should also be able to be coupled with liquid chromatography or gas chromatography.

Is the instrument selection standard higher for government-regulated food testing laboratories?

The industry laboratories in China are under the administrative leadership of different industries. Therefore, they all have administrative validity. In recent years, the government has attached great importance to food safety and has increased its investment, and the hardware facilities of laboratories have improved considerably.

Nowadays, the more complete industrial laboratories (above the provincial and municipal level) should be comparable to or better than the general commercial laboratories, in addition to the type and quantity of analytical testing equipment. To improve the efficiency of the analysis, pre-treatment can also use the equipment.

The configuration is more complete, such as microwave digestion (including microwave extraction), automatic solid-phase extraction instrument, gel chromatography purifier, solvent accelerated extraction instrument, high-speed frozen centrifuge, high-speed homogenizer, nitrogen blower, etc. The pretreatment equipment is more efficient and automated (automatic sample processing using evening hours) and will improve the reproducibility of results.

With the convergence of China's administrative and regulatory system with the international developed countries, more and more of China's industry laboratories are participating in the competency comparison activities of some international authorities, and the testing methods and results are performed by international practices.

In addition, to meet the development of food safety testing, many laboratories have started to develop new analytical methods. Therefore, in the future, industrial laboratories will be equipped with higher-end analytical instruments, such as high-resolution mass spectrometers, to make the final test results more accurate.

The above instruments are also suitable for health departments, higher education institutions, research institutes, agricultural departments, breeding farms, slaughterhouses, food and meat products deep processing enterprises, inspection and quarantine departments, etc.

Laboratory instrument package service

If you have the intention to build a laboratory, NOKI provides laboratory package services, including laboratory planning and design, instrument selection, cost budget, laboratory quality, and other dimensions to help you improve construction efficiency and cost control.

NOKI is a professional manufacturer of laboratory instruments with R&D, production, and sales in one.

The company mainly develops and produces instruments such as constant temperature water baths, CO2 incubators, vacuum drying ovens, centrifuges, steam sterilizers, shakers, and other experimental instruments.

Products from R&D testing to production, from instrument development to instrument manufacturing, are done by a professional elite team.

We always provide our customers with highly targeted, accurate, and efficient instruments and equipment according to their experimental situations.