From cobalt to chloropropanol: De tribulationibus aptis cerevisiis imbibendis

Abstract

Growing consumer expectations, technological developments and legislative pressures are the main drivers in raising food safety standards. Nevertheless, food safety "scares" and product recalls have become all too common to a public sensitised by BSE, E.coli and Salmonella incidents. With the prospect of a UK Food Standards Agency, the agenda is set for the introduction of even greater transparency. For example, data generated in government food surveys, including product brand names, are now routinely posted on the Internet. In his Laurence Bishop Memorial Lecture, David Long considered food safety issues which have challenged, or are currently challenging, the brewing industry; looking particularly from an analytical perspective. Analytical sensitivity is developing more rapidly than our understanding of the toxicology of specific analytes at the low concentrations which now can be measured routinely. Future research should move towards a more "holistic" approach to understand the actual balance of toxic and protective components in the food matrix rather than to assess the toxicology of components in isolation.