Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
that may be expected to migrate, will be exempted from regulation as a food additive
because it becomes a component of food at levels that are below the threshold of
regulation if the substance satis
es certain criteria (e.g., low-potential carcinogenicity
and estimated dietary exposure among others) [25].
21 CFR 175 covers indirect food additives from adhesives and components of
coatings (where Subpart B covers substances for use only as components of adhesives
and lists permitted chemicals and includes limitations in packaging legislation).
21 CFR 189 lists food ingredients that have been prohibited from use in human
food by the FDA. Use of any of the substances in violation of Section 21 CFR 189
causes the food involved to be adulterated in violation of the act (21 CFR 189 provides
a list of substances prohibited from use in human food, but it is not a complete list of
substances that may not lawfully be used in human food as no substance may be used
in human food unless it meets all applicable requirements of the Act).
For the case of adulterated food, the prohibition of the movement and supply of
contaminated food appears in several laws; for example, the Food, Drug and Cosmetic
Act (21 U.S.C. §331), Meat Inspection Act (21 U.S.C. §610; 9 CFR 301.2), Poultry
Products Inspection Act (21 U.S.C. §458; 9 CFR 381.1), and Egg Products Inspection
Act (21 U.S.C. §1037; 9 CFR 590.5).
All of these articles and laws can be accessed from the Web site of law departments
(such as Cornell University Law School) [26]. However, generally speaking, food in
the U.S. is not as heavily regulated as in Europe.
From the introduction above, it can be seen that deliberate chemical contamination
or processing contamination covers a wide area. As such, many techniques to rapidly
identify and quantify contaminants have been used and one of the latest techniques is
LC
MS/MS instruments came to market in
the 1980s, they were predominantly used by academic scienti
-
MS/MS. When the
first commercial LC
-
c research institutions
and for quantitative analysis in the drug industry. However, over the last three
decades, instrumentation and software have come a long way, making instruments
cheaper, more sensitive, and easier to use. As a result, LC
MS/MS is no longer the
domain of well-funded institutions and mass spectrometry experts and is now used
across many application areas and industrial sectors and has revolutionized food
testing in many laboratories.
Initially used in traditional food safety (e.g., pesticide detection), LC
-
MS/MS has
since moved into areas such as packaging testing, colorant detection, food authenticity
and functionality, allergen detection, and many more. LC
-
MS/MS is now particularly
widespread in contaminant analysis. The following sections include examples of its
use and describe how it has replaced more traditional techniques to both speed up
analysis and improve detection limits, as well as its use in many of the food
contamination cases listed above.
-
4.2 HEAT-INDUCED FOOD PROCESSING CONTAMINANTS
Of all the heat-induced food processing contaminants, acrylamide is probably one of
the most famous. Acrylamide forms in food due to the reaction between the amino
