Recently, food safety has once again become a trigger for public concern. Two incidents, namely Xibei's "smoke-free kitchen" and the "spoiled food" in Shanghai primary and secondary school canteens, made it to the trending topics within just one week, causing panic among parents, apologies from enterprises, and intervention by regulatory authorities.
Prepared Dishes Chicken Bone Starch Sausage Fish-Free Fish Balls
What Does the Food Safety Standard Cover?
According to the Food Safety Law, food safety standards are mandatory and mainly include the following contents:
1. Pollutant Limits: Stipulate the limit requirements for pathogenic microorganisms, pesticide residues, veterinary drug residues, biological toxins, heavy metals, and other pollutants in food, food additives, and related products.
2. Food Additives: Specify the types, scope of use, and dosage requirements of food additives.
3. Nutritional Component Requirements: Set forth nutritional component requirements for staple and supplementary foods for infants, young children, and specific groups.
4. Labels and Instructions: Put forward requirements for labels, marks, and instructions related to food safety requirements such as hygiene and nutrition.
5. Hygiene Requirements for Production and Operation: Specify hygiene standards during the food production and operation process.
6. Quality Requirements: Quality requirements related to food safety, including inspection methods and procedures.
7. Other Standards: Include other contents that need to be formulated as food safety standards.
Article 34 of the Food Safety Law of the People's Republic of China prohibits the production and operation of the following foods, food additives, and food-related products:
1. Foods produced by adding non-food raw materials;
2. Foods contaminated with pathogenic microorganisms, pesticide residues, veterinary drug residues, biological toxins, heavy metals, and other pollutants;
3. Foods made from food raw materials that have exceeded their shelf life;
4. Foods with food additives used beyond the specified scope or limit;
5. Meat and meat products of poultry, livestock, animals, and aquatic products that are diseased, poisoned, or have an unknown cause of death.
The Application Value of NGS in Food Testing
The traditional food safety testing model requires sampling and testing one by one at each node of the food production, transportation, quality inspection, distribution, retail, and consumer terminal. This full-chain supervision model has drawbacks such as cumbersome processes, long time consumption, complex traceability, and is prone to repeated testing and out-of-control in multiple links.
In the current complex and ever-changing food market environment, how to quickly and accurately identify the authenticity of food (e.g., identifying whether precious food ingredients are shoddy or counterfeit) and how to efficiently determine whether there are pathogenic microorganisms hidden in food or quickly identify infected animal meat and its products to prevent them from entering the dining table and endangering consumers' health—these are all key challenges that need to be overcome to ensure food safety. Genetic testing technology, especially the advanced Next-Generation Sequencing (NGS) technology, provides a powerful and effective means to solve these problems. With its significant advantages of high throughput, high speed, and high accuracy, NGS technology can quickly conduct comprehensive and in-depth sequencing analysis of the genetic material in food. By comparing with a large genetic database, it can accurately identify the species source of food in a short time, making the authenticity of food clear at a glance. At the same time, it can keenly detect the specific gene fragments of pathogenic microorganisms in food, providing a scientific basis for the timely detection and control of food safety risks, and playing an irreplaceable role in the front line of guarding food safety.
In response to food safety issues, the NGS food testing solution launched by Yeasen stands out. This solution covers two crucial links in the food testing process—food DNA extraction and DNA library construction.
In the food DNA extraction stage, Yeasen adopts advanced extraction technology and a unique reagent formula, which can efficiently and accurately extract high-quality DNA from various complex food samples. Whether it is hard-textured grains, high-fat meats, or deeply processed foods, complete and pure DNA extraction can be achieved, laying a solid foundation for subsequent testing and analysis.
In the key link of DNA library construction, Yeasen has demonstrated outstanding technical strength and accurate problem-solving capabilities, providing highly adaptable library construction solutions for different food testing scenarios. When focusing on food pathogen detection, Yeasen has launched a rapid restriction enzyme digestion-based DNA library construction solution. Relying on its unique restriction enzyme digestion mechanism, this solution can quickly and accurately cut the pathogen DNA in food samples and efficiently complete library construction. This process not only greatly shortens the library construction time and improves testing efficiency but also ensures the complete preservation of pathogen DNA information, providing a solid guarantee for the subsequent accurate identification of pathogens in food.
For the testing of deeply processed foods, the DNA in the food may be highly fragmented due to various complex processes such as high temperature, high pressure, and chemical treatment during processing, which poses a great challenge to DNA library construction. To address this problem, Yeasen has carefully developed a micro-scale short-fragment DNA library construction solution. This solution has extremely high sensitivity and specificity, which can capture effective information from a very small amount of highly fragmented DNA and successfully construct a high-quality DNA library. Even in the case of severe DNA damage in deeply processed foods, this solution can ensure the accuracy and reliability of library construction, providing strong technical support for the safety testing of deeply processed foods.
Yeasen NGS-Based Food Testing Total Solution
Ordering Information
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Product Number |
Product Name |
Application |
|
18306ES |
MolPureTM Magnetic Pathogen DNA/RNA Kit |
Pathogen Nucleic Acid Extraction |
|
Reverse Transcription |
||
|
12316ES |
DNA Library Construction |
Extended Reading
1. A New Era of RNA Library Prep: The World’s First Pre-mixed Kit Without Toxic Actinomycin D
2. Enzymatic Fragmentation DNA Library Prep Kits: Empowering Multi-Disciplinary Research Applications