Target hidden allergens, fish, pork, with new tests

The chances of mad cow disease of the contracting authority banned cattle protein or falsified threaten or raw food or bones of meat animals have evolved over the last ten years. Thus, the risk to the purchase invoice fraudsters Fishy Red Snapper, ground beef, it is not cow meat or corrupt do not see or feel ill ... yet.

All those consumer protection is in part due to improved testing methods of life - faster, more reliable strips of paper material and testing easier, more laboratory tests - has developed since the 1990s by scientists at the Food Yun-Hwa Peggy Hsieh at Florida State University. Currently, four tests in the commercial exploitation of the world with its patented technology.

Now, with two grants totaling almost $ 500,000, Hsieh begin work on the development of two new Immunoassays for commercial use on both raw and processed food products. With a three-year, $ 280,000 price in the United States Department of Agriculture, they are design tests for the detection of fish allergens, allergic reactions in more than 6 million people each year in the States United States alone. And with a two-year $ 216,000 award from a division of the group of Tanaka Kikinzoku Japan, Hsieh is a rapid test for detection of trace amounts of pork fat - good news for more than a billion Muslims and millions Jews, who eat Halal and Kosher laws, or prohibit the consumption of pork.

"In 2004, the Food Allergen Labeling and Consumer Protection Act-(FALCP) called for mandatory labeling of the eight major food allergens in January 2006, but while the methods have been developed for the presence of molluscs and shellfish, peanuts, tree nuts, wheat, soy, milk and egg, currently there is no possibility to test for fish protein in food materials, "said Hsieh.

"With increased production and consumption of seafood in recent years more consumers of fish allergies for which the risk of serious reactions and even death than it was in the wrong or not declared, by-products fish, "she says. "My USDA grant me, it is the development of a simple and reliable tool for the application FALCPA and consumer protection."

Hsieh planned to publish one or two conferences a year in the time given. Awaits you at least a patent application for the project, once it is completed.

"A quick, effective immunoassay fish allergen has the potential emergency in the marketing," she says. "Currently, two national biotechnology companies who already have a license, several of our species-specific tests for food and to heat the products to sell immunoassay kits for detection of ingredients in the seven types of food in the "Big Eight", with the exception of fishing. Since the labeling FALCP mandate took effect in 2006, these companies have been eager to seek testing to detect fish, and they have an interest in my research on the development of specific fish. "

Excellent on the heels of the USDA to give their fish allergens Hsieh two years of the fellowship Kikinzoku Kogyo K. Tanaka of Japan is ahead of the previous research on the detection of products of pork in food and feed.

"I already have a rapid immuno-assay of pork sensible recognition that every muscle in the pig feed, mixtures, irrespective of their treatment," said Hsieh. "This test was built in the 2000s and has been marketed internationally widespread. However, the detection of pork fat remains challenging because of the physico-chemical nature of the grease. Currently available methods require sophisticated instruments, in conjunction with the analysis of complex data for the interpretation of results. Rapid ground pork or other fats are not available.

"With this grant, I hope, change, because such tests are necessary for the practice of Muslim and Jewish," she says.

Hsieh novel and commercially successful living Testing Technology in the 1990s, when their first research has shown that the constraints of the benefit is not to destroy some markers of animal protein in muscle tissue. With this discovery, development Immunoassays with specific antibodies, to react to the presence of these proteins thermonuclear stable and determine what types of it. Results of immuno-assays have disastrous where conventional analysis - full-time food testing false positives and negatives, because the high heat causes most of the supply of animal proteins and to degrade DNA.