Belfast-based lab Bia Analytical has launched new food fraud-fighting tech that it says will reduce the time required to authenticate herb and spice samples from days to minutes.
The technology takes the form of a web-based portal that allows food testing laboratories and other organisations in the supply chain access to Bia Analytical’s authenticity models.
The portal “combines advanced chemometrics, AI-powered modelling and spectroscopy” to “identify authenticity instantly”, the company added.
“With food supply chains being long and complex, fraud can occur at any point from the farm to the supermarket shelf,” said Bia Analytical CEO Simon Cole. “Testing more and testing faster are key for achieving food safety and security.
“We knew there was a better way of helping the industry to make faster decisions,” he added. “By providing anyone access to our scientific models through the cloud we’re significantly increasing testing capacity in the market, as well as freeing up our scientists to develop new models for other commodities.”
Initially, Bia Analytical’s platform is being used to test herbs and spices, following a 2021 EU study that found more than half of products in the market contained “some amount of undeclared plant material”. Most affected by fraud was oregano, with 48% of samples bulked out to unapproved levels, usually with olive leaves.
The company said its modelling technology could be applied to “almost any commodity, formulation or specification” in the supply chain, including high-risk commodities such as meat, fish, soybeans, cocoa and coffee.
Typically authenticity testing could take up to two weeks to complete, Bia Analytical said, and was often limited to a small sample size due to volume-based cost.
“Manual authenticity analysis is a time-consuming and complex process, delaying decision making in the supply chain,” Cole said. “Rapidly speeding up testing, without impacting quality and accuracy, could help the UK tackle a food fraud crisis.”
The portal – developed by cloud engineering company Storm Reply – is currently in early testing with partner labs such as Reading Scientific Services.
“Saving time on complex sample analysis has the potential to transform our day-to-day authenticity testing process,” said Mark Wilson, senior group manager at RSS. “That’s why we’re pleased to partner with Bia Analytical on this essential beta test to verify the ability of the novel system to work seamlessly on our laboratory hardware. This partnership highlights the key technical considerations for system integration while reinforcing the solution’s reliability and subsequent commercial effectiveness for instant food authenticity analysis.”
Bia Analytical plans to roll out the portal to more food testing labs over the coming year.
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