An interview with Mark L. Tamplin, Ph.D., USDA-ARS Eastern Regional Research Center, showcases new tools for microbiology testing.

Food retailers, foodservice operators and consumers who purchase refrigerated, ready-to-eat foods are more aware of—and more demanding about—food safety than ever before.

Food testing shows the presence of acrylamide in various concentrations in most prepared foods, mainly those containing proteins, carbohydrates and fat, which are exposed to heat.

Enumeration methods have improved dramatically in the past few years, becoming more rapid, more automated and more accurate.

Although most regulatory and scientific organizations have yet to conclude that acrylamide present a risk to human health, consumer fear is a business concern.

The development and use of novel thermal and non-thermal technologies to process foods is increasing worldwide; thus, special attention must be paid to identifying the key goals for these new technologies.

The food safety industry has remained assiduous in developing methods and materials that test for the presence of bacterial contamination.

Daniel Y.C. Fung, Ph.D. provides an update on rapid methods and automation in microbiology for food and beverage analysis.

FDA’s Total Diet Study is an important component of the federal government’s food safety and nutrition monitoring programs, with a focus on pesticide residues, industrial chemicals, elements and radionuclides.  

Increasingly, food analysis methods are built around high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), which has proven to be an optimal technology for detecting and/or quantifying the vast majority of food analytes.