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A new food safety bill approved by the U.S. House of Representatives last week could be a boon to local firms who provide services and equipment to test for food contamination. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates there are 76 million cases of food-borne illnesses annually, 5,000 of which prove fatal.
The bill would give the U.S. Food and Drug Administration greater oversight over the food industry, including the authority to order a recall, which is now done only voluntarily. The bill would require 360,000 domestic and foreign food facilities to be inspected more frequently, with those deemed riskiest examined at least once a year.
One piece of equipment often used in the detection of chemical contamination, such as by melamine, pesticides or trace metals like lead, is a mass spectrometer, which separates substances into its component parts so they can be identified. Several Massachusetts firms produce mass spectrometers, including Billerica-based Bruker Corp., Waltham-based PerkinElmer Inc. and Milford-based Waters Corp.
“We saw a spike in sales after new guidelines issued in 2003 advised pharmaceutical companies to use certain kinds of mass spectrometers to test for drug safety. I expect that similar guidelines will be issued by the FDA with regard to food safety,” said Haydar Kustu, marketing manager at Bruker.
Waters has a three-part system that officials say can check for 400 different chemical contaminants in 10 minutes. Paul Young, senior business development manager at Waters, said that the percentage of the company’s revenue that comes from the food safety business is in the double digits. He expects provisions in the bill could plump up revenues. For instance, Young said, “There’s a requirement for facilities to be registered, and they have to demonstrate they have a testing process in place to get that registration.”
While the House bill could mean increased sales in the U.S., officials at local companies say they expect more new sales to come from international clients. Many of the larger food manufacturers and processors in the U.S. already have some testing in place, but this is not necessarily the case at overseas plants. Foreign governments, eager to prevent a repeat of the Chinese melamine scares, are also lining up to buy the instruments.
Earlier this year, Bruker sold 51 mass spectrometers, to the tune of $12 million, to the Japanese National Police Academy, where they will be used to perform analyses of different substances, including food. And, in advance of last year’s Beijing Olympics, the government-run food safety lab for Beijing contacted PerkinElmer to design a mobile food-testing unit.
The Olympics example highlights one of the challenges for universal food testing. The size of mass spectrometers, and the need for labs and technicians to evaluate the results, make the technique less-than-ideal for use at small food processors or farms. The cost for smaller companies would also be prohibitive. Mass spectrometer manufacturers are looking at new technologies and adaptations of existing technologies to help expand the availability of high-quality testing.
PerkinElmer, for example, has made a slightly smaller version of one of its mass spectrometers, added a high-powered battery pack, and put it into a carry-on-sized piece of luggage with wheels. The company’s vice president of corporate marketing, Sandra Rasmussen, said the so-called Identicheck could be taken to a farm or a border control station for testing.
Much of the contamination found at farms is microbial. While mass spectrometry is used to detect these substances, it’s just one of many controls. Brian Sheldon, head of the National Alliance for Food Safety and Security, says there is room for innovation here. “It used to take six or seven days to test for salmonella, which was a problem because the product would be out the door by then.
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