Ensuring Food Safety and Nutritional Quality in a Globalized Supply Chain
Reliable Analytical Methods and Automated Sample Preparation Solutions for a Safe, Sustainable Food System
As global food supply chains grow increasingly complex, safeguarding both public health and nutritional quality have become an urgent global priority. Expanding international trade, emerging food technologies, and the accelerating effects of climate change are introducing new risks and straining existing regulatory systems.
To ensure a safe, sustainable, and traceable food system, reliable analytical methods must be applied at every stage of production, from raw material intake through processing to final packaging. Some technologies such as solid phase extraction (SPE) and immunoaffinity column clean-up (IAC), particularly when automated, enable high-quality, reproducible analysis of complex food matrices.
The Evolving Food Safety Landscape
Globalization and Complexity
The globalization of food production and distribution frequently involves multiple countries, intermediaries, and processing steps, making it increasingly difficult to track safety and quality. Each link in the supply chain introduces potential sources of contamination and variability.
Emerging Food Technologies
Novel protein sources, including lab-grown meat and algae-based foods, present new opportunities for sustainable nutrition but also create regulatory and analytical challenges as scientists work to assess safety, allergenicity, and nutritional composition.
Climate Change Impacts
Climate change compounds food safety risks. Rising temperatures, altered rainfall patterns, and extreme weather events contribute to crop failures, contamination, and the spread of foodborne pathogens and toxins.
In 2024, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimated that 48 million Americans, roughly one in six, experienced foodborne illness, resulting in 128,000 hospitalizations and 3,000 deaths. This preventable public health burden is mirrored globally.
Strengthening Standards and Analytical Capacity
Governments and international organizations are tightening requirements for traceability, labeling, and contaminant testing. Effective policies must balance consumer protection with access to affordable, nutrient-rich foods.
To ensure comprehensive food safety and quality, reliable and sensitive analytical methods are essential for detecting a wide spectrum of potential hazards. These range from chemical contaminants, such as acrylamide, PFAS, PAHs, and pesticides, to toxic metals like lead and mercury. Additionally, such methods must identify natural toxins including mycotoxins and marine biotoxins, residues of veterinary drugs such as chloramphenicol, microbial pathogens like Salmonella, Listeria, and E. coli, as well as key nutritional components such as vitamin B12 and essential fatty acids like omega-3.
Food samples are inherently complex, so a sample cleanup step is often necessary before analysis to eliminate matrix interferences and enhance the accuracy and reproducibility of results.
Analytical Workflows and Cleanup Technologies
From Sampling to Detection
Food analysis workflows typically follow several key stages: sampling, homogenization, extraction, cleanup, detection, and quantification. The cleanup stage is critical for ensuring that trace-level analytes can be reliably detected in complex matrices.
Figure 1. Analytical Workflow Examples in Food Testing – illustrating key steps from sampling to detection.
Solid Phase Extraction (SPE)
SPE is a sample preparation technique used to isolate and concentrate analytes from complex matrices. In SPE, a liquid sample is passed through a solid sorbent material (e.g., silica), which selectively retains compounds such as PAHs, acrylamide, or PSP toxins based on their chemical properties, including polarity, charge, or hydrophobicity. The retained analytes are then eluted with an appropriate solvent or fractionated in family of compounds (e.g., neutral lipids, polar lipids, and free fatty acids) for subsequent analysis.
Immunoaffinity Column Clean-up (IAC)
Immunoaffinity column clean-up (IAC) utilizes antibodies immobilized on a solid support within a cartridge to selectively bind specific target analytes, such as ochratoxin A, which can then be recovered during an elution step. However, to meet the high throughput demands of food safety laboratories and reduce the number of experiments, new IAC columns have been developed to isolate simultaneously multiple target analytes in a single run, for instance combined Aflatoxins/Ochratoxin A.
Both SPE and IAC are valued for their reliability, reproducibility, and compatibility with automation and are key drivers for adoption in food safety and quality control laboratories.
The Role of Automation in Food Testing
Automation is increasingly essential for ensuring consistency, minimizing human error, and meeting the growing demand for high-throughput sample analysis. Automated systems streamline workflows, improve data reliability, and support compliance with evolving regulatory standards.
Gilson’s Automated SPE Solutions
Gilson offers a broad range of automated SPE systems designed to meet the needs of food and beverage laboratories. The ASPEC® 271 and ASPEC® 274 Systems provide reproducible, flexible solutions for automated sample clean-up and isolation of analytes from complex matrices.
Supporting Research and Innovation
Gilson’s automated SPE systems have been cited in multiple recent publications across diverse food safety and nutrition applications, underscoring their versatility and reliability:
Seger, A. et al. (2025). Toxin uptake and slowed reflexes by the marine snail Lunella undulata following exposure to paralytic shellfish toxin producing Alexandrium catenella. Harmful Algae, 147, 102868.
da Silva, S.A. et al. (2024). Occurrence and exposure to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in traditional dry-cured or smoked meat products from Brazil. Food Production, Processing and Nutrition, 6, 82.
Jensen, S.N. et al. (2025). Kinetic modeling of acrylamide formation during seaweed bread baking. LWT, 215, 117260.
Stork, E. et al. (2025). In Vitro Digestion of High-Fat Commercial Dairy Products: Detailed Analysis of Lipid Classes. Eur. J. Lipid Sci. Technol., 127, e70001.
Automating Sample Cleanup for Ochratoxin A Quantification in Cereals and Spices Using OCHRARHONE WIDE® OCHRATOXIN and ASPEC® 271
Automation of Ochratoxin A isolation from cereals and spices using r-Biopharm IAC columns demonstrates the efficiency and reproducibility of Gilson’s ASPEC® systems for trace contaminant detection.
