Safer Mosques pilot kicks off in Singapore from 25 June

The Islamic Religious Council of Singapore (Muis) has released an educational video in conjunction with the Safer Mosques pilot, running at four mosques for the Friday prayer starting 25 June.

Safer Mosques are selected mosques offering more than 50 spaces, with pre-event testing (PET) implementation. However, congregants who have been fully vaccinated do not need to undergo PET.

Whether the pilot will be extended to more mosques will depend on the community’s vaccination rate, how soon we can adapt to PET if we need to, as well as the prevailing national guidelines, which are aligned to the rate of community spread, Muis said.

Singapore mosques can currently offer one zone of 50 spaces without pre-event testing (PET), or up to 250 spaces with PET. on a smooth visit at the Safer Mosques!

Details:

View the video.

SCIEX announces new halal food testing method

SCIEX, a global player in life science analytical technologies, has announced a new meat species authentication method designed for halal food verification has been developed using its SCIEX QTRAP 6500 LC-MS/MS system. The sensitive and versatile new method incorporates a faster sample preparation procedure than previous mass spectrometry-based speciation methods, simplifying and accelerating meat testing.

Scientists at the University of Münster say the method is the first to detect multiple species simultaneously while achieving the lowest limits of detection, even in cooked and highly processed meats. The method marks a new dimension in meat speciation testing, delivering excellent sensitivity and reliability of results compared with traditional approaches to meat authentication. Novel methods such as this significantly advance the science of combatting food fraud.

Traditional halal meat speciation testing methods utilising polymerase chain reactions (PCR) and ELISA have concerning limitations, particularly in their lack of specificity, which can lead businesses getting away with false product labelling and ultimately food fraud. However, this new LC-MS/MS based method enables robust, specific, and simultaneous detection of protein peptides of multiple meat species including beef, chicken, pig, goat, lamb, deer and many more, at levels as low as 0.02%, and can be used to support halal certification testing programmes, SCIEX said.

“The QTRAP 6500 has the best available sensitivity and specificity, which are essential for this new method to meet the needs of religious communities, where the limit of detection must be as low as possible,” said Dr Jens Brockmeyer, Research Group Leader at the Institut für Lebenschmittelchemie, University of Münster. “Food testing laboratories with QTRAP Systems can easily adopt this method, including those without proteomics backgrounds."

Food testing laboratories are increasingly turning to mass spectrometry for its greater accuracy, reliability and robustness over traditional methods for identifying and quantifying food ingredients.

“This method brings a new level of reliability to food analysis and labeling that will allow millions of people to consume halal-certified meat with greater confidence,” said Jean-Paul Mangeolle, President of SCIEX. “It exploits the QTRAP 6500’s superb sensitivity and accuracy to offer powerful new capabilities for faster, multi-species testing in diverse sample types.”

The SCIEX QTRAP technology enables quantitative MRM3 workflows, which enhance the selectivity and data quality, and provides comprehensive peptide sequence confirmation and quantitation when analysing complex food samples.

Interested?

Download the Halal Food and Product Testing Info Kit 

PCR-based food testing to grow at a CAGR of 11% through to 2016

During the past three decades since its invention, the polymerase chain reaction method (PCR) has become a fundamental method for analysis in life sciences. While developed countries still dominate the PCR market, emerging markets are showing strong growth trends. 

A September study from Acubiz Consulting titled The Asia Pacific Markets for PCR Technologies identifies market dynamics in various countries in the Asia Pacific (APAC) region and forecasts the potential of the market related to product segments, technology segments, and end-use segments. 

The global demand for PCR was around US$10.6 billion in 2013. Even though North America had the highest market share in 2013, the Asia Pacific region is forecast to grow at a CAGR of over 11% between 2013 and 2018.

The application segments of this platform are still expanding, driven by the expiry of key PCR patents. The rising investments in the field of companion diagnostics have also been boosting the demand for PCR. Food safety testing is another significant end-use segment of the technology, driven by both consumer demand and regulatory requirements. Identifying the animal origin of meat products is another application.

Companies featured in this report include Abbott Laboratories,
Arachem, Cepheid, Fisher Biotec, KogeneBiotech and Seegene.

New tests for contaminated meat are more sensitive than ever

Scientists are experimenting with new tests based on the original polymerase chain reaction (PCR) to identify the animal origin of various meat products, and coming up with increasingly accurate results. While ELISA and PCR are the typical methods used to determine meat contamination, they may be more expensive, slow; require special equipment, technicians with specific skills, or have limitations to their sensitivity and specificity. 

Better tests are needed because of the possibility that a product claimed to be from one animal could well be adulterated with meat from another: an experiment reported in January 2014 in the Journal of Food Science Technology, for example, analysed 224 meat products using PCR and PCR-RFLP* and found that 7.58% of the samples actually contained haram (unlawful or forbidden) meat. Similarly, a study from the Asian Australasian Journal of Animal Sciences published October 2014, also using PCR-RFLP, showed that nearly half (45%) of all meatballs from the local market in the Yogyakarta region in Indonesia suffered from pork contamination, although meatball shops in the Surabaya region were free of it. 

In February 2014, Food Chemistry published an experiment on detecting the adulteration of meat products with pork with another PCR method, the assay of mitochondrial D-loop. The method worked for raw, cooked (at 60, 80 and 100°C), autoclaved (121°C) and microwave-oven processed pork, and could detect as little as 10 picograms (a picogram is 10^-12 of a gram) of pork in meat from other species. 

Another PCR assay, for dog meat adulteration, was described in Meat Science in August 2014. A blind test, one where researchers cannot tell the origin of the samples, showed that the method can reliably detect as little as 0.04 nanograms (a nanogram is 10^-9 of a gram) of dog DNA mixed in with chicken or beef meatballs. 

Another method was described in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, published in October 2014. A method that combines liquid chromatography with mass spectrometry (often referred to as HPLC-MS) provides fast, sensitive detection of horse and pork in highly processed food. As little as 0.24% pork or horse in beef could be detected, even if the meat had already been cooked, with the samples ready for testing in 2 minutes.

*RFLP stands for restriction fragment length polymorphism.

JAKIM clarifies halal certification procedure in Malaysia

A story in Bernama has clarified how there could have been differing results regarding porcine DNA contamination of Cadbury chocolates in Malaysia.

The story broke in late May with Malaysia's Ministry of Health stating that the halal status of two flavours of Cadbury chocolate, made in Malaysia, were no longer confirmed with the finding of pig DNA in the chocolate. By early June however, JAKIM had not found any such contamination in Cadbury chocolate.

Bernama quotes the Director of the Islamic Development Department (JAKIM), Datuk Othman Mustapha, who explains that the findings of the Chemistry Department are the only ones that may be taken into consideration as it is the only the department has the expertise to conduct highly specialised tests. The Ministry of Health lab used for the tests has been accredited by the Standards Department to conduct tests on meat and seafood based products but not processed food like chocolate.

Othman also pointed out that the tests conducted by the Ministry of Health were based on samples available on the commercial market, which could have been contaminated, whereas JAKIM's tests were based on samples direct from Cadbury Malaysia's factory.
Previous stories on the matter are blogged here:

24 May: Cadbury Malaysia recalls the chocolate.
29 May: The National Fatwa Council in Malaysia weighs in on the implications of having consumed such chocolate.
31 May: Indonesia conducts its own tests on Cadbury chocolate.
2 June: Saudi Arabia tests Cadbury chocolate.
3 June: JAKIM says extensive tests on Cadbury chocolate of several flavours, direct from the factory, are negative for pig DNA.

Saudi food authority takes in Cadbury chocolate for tests

Reports early this week said that the Saudi Food & Drug Authority is now randomly testing Cadbury chocolate for pig DNA after the report of pig DNA found in two flavours of halal-certified Cadbury chocolate in Malaysia.

Channel NewsAsia said that the chocolate in the kingdom is made in Egypt but was being tested as part of routine tests, while Arab News also noted that some chocolate is imported from the UK. The authorities in Saudi Arabia are also checking to see if any of the chocolate has been imported from Malaysia, the Channel NewsAsia report said.

Last week, Indonesian authorities said they had also tested Cadbury chocolate in the country but found no contamination, while Malaysian businesses called for a boycott of sister brands.