RAPID PATTERN RECOGNITION, AN ALTERNATIVE FOOD SAFETY SOLUTIONS OR A SCIENTIFIC ARTEFACT?
Special Symposium - Innovations in Food Technology (LMC Congress)
Modern Analysis: Chemical & Multivariate Analysis (Food-6a)
Keywords: chemometrics, fish, fatty acids, dioxin, safety
The general cause of high levels of persistent lipophylic organic pollutants (PLOP’s), such as dioxin, in human tissue is primarily caused by bioaccumulation through the food chain in the lipid phase 1,2,3. Food, especially fish products, is the main cause of exposure. Accordingly, reliable, time- and cost-effective PLOPs screening methods are required in foods and feeds for effective reduction of this intake through the nutritional pathways.
We have investigated methods for dioxin screening, employing chemometrics and using fatty acid pattern recognition .to a large number of samples: above 230 fishmeal and 150 Fish samples.
Our work illustrated strong covariances between fatty acid profile and PLOPs probably to eating habits, geographics and the related local pollutants. These covariances, when employed for developing dioxin and PCB screening methods based on Partial Least Square regressions yielded Root Means Square Error of Prediction between 5 and 10% of the considered range. These results should be considered in contrast to accepted screening methods such as Ah receptor based methods that are time consuming and very costly.
Presented Thursday 20, 09:50 to 10:05, in session Modern Analysis: Chemical & Multivariate Analysis (Food-6a).
