The development of the food testing instrument industry urgently needs standardization

The rapid growth of the testing market not only promotes the rapid development of domestic testing institutions, but also attracts foreign testing institutions to invest and establish laboratories in China. The broad market prospects in the field of rapid food safety testing have attracted a large amount of capital to enter this industry, which has a certain positive significance for the rapid development and technological progress of the industry.

In recent years, with the frequent occurrence of food safety issues, especially the neglect of food safety by small and medium-sized workshop style producers and operators, the monitoring and supervision of these large quantities of workshop style food products by local quality inspection and testing agencies has become an important task for food safety in China. Rapid detection instruments are often used as screening methods and play an increasingly important role in ensuring local food and drinking water safety.

Rapid detection technology and market for food safety

As one of the important events for global food safety exchange, rapid food safety testing will be listed as one of the important themes at the BSFDT2014 Beijing Food Testing and Traceability Conference held at the Beijing Exhibition Center (Old Hall) on April 8, 2014. In collaboration with multiple domestic and foreign academic organizations and technology manufacturers, we will focus on the world's rapid food testing technology based on the rapidly growing Asia Pacific food market. The content involves dozens of categories such as food safety rapid testing, pesticide residue rapid testing, food quality testing, edible oil analysis, food formaldehyde testing, dairy analysis, beverage analysis, water activity analysis, oil oxidation stability analysis, fiber determination, food volume determination, protein rapid determination, tissue analysis, and milk fat centrifuge. Covering the entire industry chain of food production raw materials, including planting and breeding, procurement, production, logistics, and even terminals.

The rapid growth of the testing market not only promotes the rapid development of domestic testing institutions, but also attracts foreign testing institutions to invest and establish laboratories in China. The broad market prospects in the field of rapid food safety testing have attracted a large amount of capital to enter this industry, which has a certain positive significance for the rapid development and technological progress of the industry. However, each device manufacturer should deeply explore segmented markets based on their own advantages, better provide products in advantageous fields, and meet the diverse needs of the market.

The development of the food rapid testing industry is uneven

With the rapid growth of demand for food safety rapid testing, the food rapid testing equipment industry has also shown a mixed growth trend. Due to the large number of manufacturers producing fast inspection products nowadays, the accuracy of fast inspection varies among their respective products. Zhang Hongyan, Deputy Director of the Business Department of Urban and Rural Warehousing Supermarkets in Haidian District, Beijing, believes that the accuracy rate of most legitimate fast inspection products on the market is currently around 70%. Due to the large number of manufacturers producing fast inspection products nowadays, the accuracy of fast inspection varies among different products. In practical operation, there may be false positives for rapid testing products, which means that there are problems detected by rapid testing but further testing and confirmation by nationally qualified laboratories indicate that there are no issues; There are also cases of false negatives, where there is no problem detected by rapid testing but further testing by a nationally qualified laboratory confirms that there is a problem. These situations can sometimes cause problematic food to leak through the net and sometimes lead to misjudgment.

At present, relevant departments of the country are brewing mechanisms for the admission and product certification of fast inspection product production enterprises, conducting actual tests on accuracy, detection limit, precision, repeatability, reproducibility, anti-interference, and full analysis time to evaluate the effectiveness of fast inspection instruments, raise the threshold for product production and sales, ensure the healthy development of the industry, and truly play the role of fast inspection as a primary guarantee technology for food safety.

Rapid detection instruments tend towards portability and informatization

More than a decade ago, the funding for rapid testing projects was very limited, but now the approved funding for rapid testing projects has increased significantly, indicating that the Chinese government currently attaches great importance to the research of rapid testing technology. From Beijing Zhongwei in the 1990s to Wanger after 2000, and now to Weide Weikang, Qinbang Biotechnology, and Zhongde Biotechnology, the professional team engaged in rapid detection research and development in China has become increasingly large. The development speed of rapid detection technology is very fast, and the technical level of domestic rapid detection instruments and supporting reagent kits has greatly improved, with an increasing variety of types. I believe that currently domestic rapid testing instruments are not inferior to imported rapid testing instruments and fully meet domestic demand.

At present, we have put some new technologies into practical use, but there are still some new technologies in the research stage of our laboratory. In the future, we will gradually realize the commercialization of instruments in order to promote their application more widely and meet more market demands.

Gao Zhixian believes that portability, series integration, informatization, and integration are the development directions of rapid detection instruments. More portable, even able to fit into a pocket and be brought to the site for risk monitoring work; We can provide a series of response and detection plans, such as emergency events, large-scale event support, and daily supervision and monitoring; Informationization is very important. After on-site testing, the data is directly transmitted to the laboratory for confirmation, which has faster and more accurate guiding significance for the next step of work; In the future, rapid detection instruments will become increasingly integrated, such as combining with new materials and technologies such as molecular imprinting technology, nanobiotechnology, and biosensing technology, which will provide more development space for rapid detection instruments.

Food safety rapid inspection has been incorporated into the law

Li Yujia, Deputy Director of the First Division of the China Food and Drug Administration, also said that rapid testing has legal status. According to relevant laws and regulations such as the Food Safety Law, food safety regulatory departments, especially grassroots regulatory departments, must adopt rapid testing methods in the daily supervision process of food safety to timely detect problems. This is clearly stipulated by the law. He also mentioned that according to the results of rapid testing, relevant units and individuals need to be punished, and further laws need to be formulated to clarify.

Yu Jun, Director of the Third Division of the General Administration of Food and Drug Administration, said at the meeting that currently, rapid testing products are widely used in relevant government departments in China, but there is no department or relevant policy that regulates the quality of rapid testing products.

In response to this situation, Yin Jianjun, Secretary General of the Standardization Technical Committee for Inspection Methods of Key Products under National Quality Supervision, said that a professional working group for food safety rapid inspection methods of the Standardization Technical Committee for Inspection Methods of Key Products under National Quality Supervision will be established. The main task is to develop comparison and verification standards for food safety rapid inspection methods, and based on this, select good methods for rapid detection at home and abroad to form rapid detection standards.