AOAC India
The organization is committed to being a proactive, worldwide provider and facilitator in the development
Currently food borne diseases and quality of food are biggest challenges in developing countries like India. In such scenario reliable and accurate analysis of food becomes very important factor. For reliable and confident testing two essential requirements are reliable method and advance technology. While on one hand, AOAC through it’s scientific community try to continuously provide robust and reliable methods on other hand they expect technology providers like Shimadzu compliment with advance hardware which gives sensitive, selective and reliable results.
“Contributing to society through science and technology” is philosophy of Shimadzu and “Advance excellence in the analytical sciences and to support the analytical community” being mission of AOAC-India section both organizations work together for benefits of analytical community by providing latest information and providing platform for parallel dialogues. One of the parts of this activity is conducting Seminars and Workshops. AOAC-India section and Shimadzu has been conducting such seminars and workshops in past and latest one was conducted on theme “FOOD SAFETY SEMINAR FOR TESTING LABORATORIES”—One step ahead to improve Indian Food Export, at J.W Marriott, Sahar-Mumbai on October 26th, 2018. It was evening seminar attended by 23 testing laboratories in and around Mumbai region and all together 50 participants were actively involved in this seminar.
The seminar started with Welcome address by Shimadzu MD, Mr. Yoshiyuki Fujino who in brief explained the role and commitment of Shimadzu Analytical India Pvt Ltd towards technological support to Indian scientist.
Followed by Welcome speech by AOAC-India Section Chairman, an eminent scientist in food safety field and Principle Scientist, NRCG, Dr. Kaushik Banerjee. He expressed his experience about long term association with Shimadzu Corporation and collaborative approach of both parties. Also, he touched upon the changing trend in Food Safety areas and explained how authenticity evaluation and certification of “Origin” is gaining importance in food safety testing. He specifically mentioned that AOAC-India is already working on developing such methods in collaboration with FSSAI and Instrument vendors like Shimadzu.
In the key note address, Dr. S.K.Saxena-Director, Export Inspection Council-India, emphasized on the importance of collaboration for the growth of any industry or testing laboratory and hence to leverage on expertise available in the field to benefit the organization as a whole. Dr. Saxena also quoted “As per WTO, the import of food and agriculture is easier in India, whereas export from India is difficult”
He also mentioned that in year 2017 India exported $30 billion worth agricultural and food products and major issues faced were authenticity and origin of product. Also, he stated “When sea food is processed, it is difficult to certify it.” So current challenges are in authenticity and Origin certification. Dr. Saxena mentioned his concern about export of Sea food, Honey and Rice products which are facing similar problems, and which are backbone of Indian food export.
In connection to above points, Dr. Niladri Chatterjee from CIFT-Kochi spoke on complete fist supply chain and issues related to contaminants and food fraud in fish export. He mentioned the importance of HRMS, ambient mass spectrometer and OMICS technologies in food fraud analysis. He says “Genomics can be preferred approach for fish fraud”. He reiterated the challenges in food authentication and presented few advance solutions to it.
Prof. Erich Leitner, Head, Institute of Analytical Chemistry & Food Chemistry, Graz University for Technology-Austria, was the resourceful personality who briefed the customers on the key aspects to enhance food testing in the laboratories. Various illustrative examples regarding GCxGC technique and LC-GC hyphenated technique for addressing issues related to bad odor, antioxidants and mineral oils in processed food which made all the audience very inquisitive or curious.
Challenges and opportunities with regards to Rice export testing were very well addressed by Dr. Anoop Krishnan-Assistant Director, EIA-Kochi. He said “India ranks second in the production of rice after China. India produces 60% of worlds Basmati Rice and accounts for 80% of EU import. Currently we are facing challenges in testing and controlling the levels of Tricycazole, Triazaphos, Carbendazim, Acephate, Thiamethoxam pesticides on which we faced EU rejections increased from 5 to 11 from 2017 to 2018.
Shimadzu”s new QuEChAR Solutions for Food safety were presented in detail by Dr. Jitendra Kelkar-General Manager, Shimadzu’s customer support center-Mumbai. Also, the role of high resolution mass spectrometer “Q-ToF” and its importance in Food safety-a glimpse was showcased by Miss. Rashi Kochhar-Deputy Manager, Shimadzu’s customer support center-Mumbai.