I returned from Toronto this morning badly jetlagged and tired after several days of intense meetings at the AOAC International’s annual conference. This was all outweighed by the positive impression I was left with from the event.
The one session that was still keeping my sleepy brain busy was the roundtable on consumer analytical devices. Typical topics covered by AOAC evolve around residues, contaminants and pathogens, among others – all tested by different methodologies in laboratories. Having attended AOAC for all but two meetings over the past 18 years, I do not recall having ever talked about consumer analytical devices – until now.
The roundtable was comprised of the CEOs and a CTO of four startup companies: Allergy Amulet represented by Abigail Barnes, Consumer Physics by Dror Sharon, Dots Corporation by Renuka Babu, and Nima Labs by Francisco Dias Lourenco.
At first, the roundtable participants introduced themselves: Abigail’s company is developing a portable food allergen/ingredient sensor based on molecular imprinted polymers, which you can learn more about in their science video. Dror’s Scïo scanner has been on the market for over a year and is based on near infra-red scanning. This handheld device connects to your smartphone via Bluetooth and the app can determine nutritional values, freshness, and identify active components in pharmaceutical pills. Renuka’s Dots Corporation is, like Allergy Amulet, working on allergen detection devices, but uses a different technology, Signaling Polynucleotides, to capture the target analyte, according to their technology page. Francisco’s Nima Labs already has a gluten sensor on the market using antibody-based detection. Their innovation has eliminated all liquid handling steps that typically are part of immunological analysis. Nima is expecting to launch a peanut this year.
After the introduction, the panel members explained their motivations for developing such devices. Most of the executives, which are developing or have developed allergen testing devices, explained that either they or a close relative have food allergies. They identified the need to give the food allergy additional reassurances that their foods are safe when eating out. In one case, we learned that the CEO had been hospitalized several times with severe allergic reactions and anaphylactic shock. Clearly, being affected so severely is a very strong motive for introducing a product to the market that could reduce the health risk for the food allergy community. In the case of the Scio sensor, development was mostly driven by the desire to allow consumers to adopt healthier diets and evaluate the authenticity of products. The detection of milk adulteration with melamine, for example, was mentioned in this context (we all remember the 2008 incident where numerous babies died from melamine-contaminated infant formula). In sum, consumer safety appeared to motivate all founders in developing these different technologies.
The panel then discussed if their technology was meant to replace laboratory tests. All agreed that their technology would not replace, but rather supplement, laboratory testing, enabling consumers to add an extra layer of testing to mitigate risk. At the manufacturing level, while ingredients used for preparing foods undergo rigorous quality and safety controls, the risk of cross-contamination in restaurants, kitchens, and catering outlets is often high.
At this point, the audience became significantly more engaged. One voice from the audience asked: How can you be sure that the food on your plate in the restaurant is safe if you only test a small portion? Indeed, a dish with multiple different foods each carries the risk of carrying the allergen in each of the components. The panel members explained that testing will contribute to reducing the risk of being exposed to food allergens, but can never eliminate the risk.
I was thinking how difficult it would be to detect spot contamination, e.g. a piece of peanut accidentally dropped into a potato mash on a plate served to a customer of a restaurant? What is the likelihood of the consumer using one of those devices to sample exactly the part of the potato mash containing the peace of peanut? But how different is that to spot contamination in prepackaged foods? Imagine a pizza production of 10000 pizzas per lot, and on one of them, a piece of peanut is dropped. Even though laboratories usually homogenize the entire sample they receive, what is the likelihood that the food manufacturer sends, out of the 10000 pizzas produced, the one pizza containing the piece of peanut? What can be concluded is that spot contamination is inherently difficult to detect, no matter if you test with one of those devices in a restaurant or send a small sample of your production lot to the laboratory for testing. There is a difference in the probability of this spot contamination occurring though. Processes at food manufacturer’s sites tend to be very well controlled and the likelihood of spot contamination is low. On the other hand, processes in restaurant kitchens or catering outlets tend to be much less controlled. So, the probability of spot contamination occurring in a restaurant is significantly higher. An exception to these are the ‘free-from’ restaurants, e.g. a peanut-free restaurant. Here, chefs specifically cater for those with specific allergies and only source ingredients and components which do not contain the allergen, thereby decreasing the chance of spot contamination for that particular allergen through carry-over.
I heard more than once the opinion that food safety testing should be left to Food Business Operators (FBOs). I certainly agree that FBO should not be released from their responsibility of testing if their products comply with the label they carry. But I also know that there are still cases where these things slip. Here, food fraud or mispackaging are often the reasons. It is still not impossible to have egg noodles accidentally packaged with a label that is for non-egg containing noodles. Or the case of cumin spice having been adulterated with peanuts. Looking at the most recent Food Fraud Report by the European Commission, mislabeling accounted for the highest number of incidents. While current measures by food manufacturers and enforcement authorities clearly reduce the risk of such incidents occurring, the remaining degree of risk is not zero.
At that point, my thoughts were drifting to two cases where allergens had been used to adulterate restaurant foods. In 2016 and 2017, two tragic deaths resulted from peanut allergies when a restaurant fraudulently replaced the expensive almonds in the sauce with significant amounts of the cheaper peanuts. And even though both of the individuals with peanut allergies had asked if the dish contained peanut — and alerted them that they were allergic — the restaurant staff told them that the dish only contained almond (which they could tolerate). I wondered what difference it would have made if those people had allergen testing devices to verify what was really in their food.
The discussions around risk control and risk management lead to a key point: how to communicate to consumers what the results of the food tests mean and how they need to be interpreted. It is essential to communicate that testing one or even several small portions from the same food does not ensure that the dish is free of allergens. Also, a negative result of the portions tested does not necessarily mean there are no allergens. It is paramount that the applicability and limitations of the tests are very clearly communicated to the target audience. It was encouraging to see that companies with devices on the market had already implemented this kind of communication. However, it was also acknowledged by the roundtable participants that there remained room for improvement.
Many issues, including sampling and risk communication, had already been addressed by the Stakeholder Guidance Document that was published earlier this year. Notably, the majority of the panelists contributed to this document. Two key takeaways from this document, besides sampling, are the demonstration of fitness-for-purpose of these devices and independent validation. It is imperative that devices in consumer’s hands undergo rigorous testing, comparable to the methods used by laboratories. In the course of the panel discussion, we learned that some of that work was well underway and would be published soon.
Following the panel, I was left with the impression that discussions like these help address stakeholder concerns in a way many other methods cannot.
One key concern from the analytical community is that these devices ensure that they work as expected (fitness for purpose) and that they convey appropriate messaging about the interpretation of results in a way that can be understood by the user (risk communication). It is important that consumers receive accurate information allowing them to make informed decisions about these devices.
For me, I see applications going well beyond consumer use. Some of the devices simplify complicated and potentially error-prone steps in the analytical process, making them very user-friendly. Such devices can also have applications for quality control in the food industry or enforcement authorities. Consumer Physics already set examples by their agreements with major food and feed producers. I will certainly keep following these companies and their emerging technologies. I believe that we live in very exciting times! Somebody recently wrote: Science never ceases to amaze. And I can only wholeheartedly agree.
