US agency uses UPLC systems to monitor food safety

Waters Corp says the US Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (CFSAN), College Park, MD recently purchased nine Waters Acquity UltraPerformance LC (UPLC) systems to monitor domestically-produced and imported food sold in interstate commerce.

The new instruments will be placed within CFSAN’s Office of Regulatory Science for developing and validating methods for testing food additives, pesticide residues, dietary supplements, mycotoxins, vitamins, seafood toxins, industrial chemicals, and regulated food and cosmetic products.

The systems were needed for liquid chromatography instrumentation with the required resolution, sensitivity, and speed to meet the ever-increasing challenges of modern multi-residue analysis.

The FDA’s Office of Regulatory Science develops liquid chromatography (LC) and liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry (LC/MS) based methods of analyzing foods and sharing their expertise with other FDA field laboratories.

The methods are essential for carrying out agency duties such as pre-market approval of new food additives, risk assessment and setting of priorities, coordinated enforcement and compliance with pesticide tolerances set by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), surveillance, and outbreak response.