Analytical Testing – Special Projects
QuanTEM Food Safety Laboratories offers a comprehensive range of analytical services designed to meet the diverse needs of the food and nutraceutical industry. From microbiological testing to chemical analysis and custom-tailored projects, our team of experts utilizes advanced methodologies to deliver precise, actionable results. Explore our services below to see how we can help ensure the safety, quality, and compliance of your food products.
Special Projects
QuanTEM Food Safety Laboratories offers tailored solutions through our Special Projects division, designed to address the unique challenges and needs of the food and dietary supplement industries. Whether you’re launching a new product, validating processes, or conducting in-depth safety studies, our expertise and customized approach ensure your project is completed with precision and reliability.
Shelf Life Studies
Shelf life studies are a critical component of product development and quality assurance, providing the data needed to determine how long your product remains safe, stable, and desirable under typical storage conditions. At QuanTEM Food Safety Laboratories, we specialize in designing and executing shelf life studies for a wide range of matrices across the food industry, including ready-to-eat foods, nuts and nut butters, seed butters, meats, snacks, and more. Our process is highly interactive, with regular communication and collaboration to ensure the study is tailored to your specific goals and needs. By keeping you informed at every step, we work together to deliver actionable insights that align with your product’s unique requirements.
Microbial Stability
Microbial stability plays a key role in determining a product’s safety and longevity. Our shelf life studies focus on monitoring microorganisms that influence the sensory, physical, and microbial quality of your product over time.
We typically assess microbial stability by testing for:
- Aerobic and Anaerobic Plate Counts: Measuring the overall microbial load under both oxygen-rich and oxygen-deprived conditions to evaluate the product’s microbial balance during storage.
- Lactic Acid Bacteria (LAB): Monitoring LAB levels, particularly in vacuum-packed and/or fermented products, to ensure they remain stable without compromising quality.
- Yeast and Mold Counts: Differentiating between yeast, which can cause unwanted fermentation, and mold, which may lead to visible spoilage, to maintain sensory appeal and shelf life.
- Pseudomonas Species: Common spoilage organisms in raw meat, these bacteria can thrive in refrigerated conditions and can be indicators of freshness and spoilage in raw meat shelf life studies.
- Hygiene- and Sanitation-Associated Organisms: These can include coliforms, Enterobacteriaceae, Clostridium perfringens, and Staphylococcus aureus, which can indicate production hygiene, sanitation practices, or potential contamination risks during storage.
- Pathogen testing: While pathogens are not typically associated with product spoilage, testing for pathogens such as Salmonella, Listeria, or E. coli can be included as part of shelf life studies upon request. This service is available to address specific client needs or regulatory requirements unique to your product.
By comprehensively analyzing these microbial factors, we help you understand how your product performs over time and identify opportunities to optimize its safety and stability.
Chemical Stability
Chemical stability is another essential factor in shelf life studies, as it may directly impact the flavor, nutritional value, and safety of your product. As appropriate, our studies may monitor chemical changes over time, including:
- Rancidity: For products like nuts, nut butters, and certain snacks, we assess indicators such as free fatty acid (FFA), peroxide value (PV), and anisidine value (AV) to evaluate the stability of fats and oils.
- Moisture Content and Water Activity: These are critical for preventing microbial growth and ensuring the desired texture and mouthfeel in products such as seed butters, meats, and baked goods.
- pH Changes: Monitoring pH can be crucial for assessing the stability of acidified or fermented foods and beverages.
- Nutritional Degradation: We evaluate the retention of key nutrients such as protein content, fat content, vitamins and minerals over time (matrix-dependent), ensuring your product meets label claims throughout its shelf life.
Our expertise in analyzing chemical stability extends to complex matrices, allowing us to provide tailored insights specific to your product type.
Delivering Actionable Insights
Our shelf life studies go beyond basic testing to provide detailed, actionable insights that help you make informed decisions about product formulation, packaging, and storage conditions. Whether you’re developing a new product or optimizing an existing one, we deliver the data you need to ensure your products maintain their safety, quality, and appeal for their intended shelf life.
Accelerated Shelf Life Studies
Accelerated shelf life studies can be a powerful tool for evaluating the stability of products with long shelf lives in a shorter time frame. By subjecting samples to controlled conditions that simulate aging—such as elevated temperatures, increased humidity, or exposure to light—these studies can provide valuable insights into how a product will perform under typical storage conditions over time.
The interpretation of accelerated study data, however, requires careful consideration, as the results can be influenced by the specific characteristics of the product and the storage conditions. For instance, some products may exhibit chemical or physical changes at elevated temperatures that do not occur under normal conditions, while others may show predictable and linear degradation. It’s essential to tailor the testing approach and data analysis to the unique properties of your product and its intended shelf life.
Accelerated shelf life studies are particularly useful for:
- Evaluating products with inherently long shelf lives.
- Assessing the stability of new formulations or packaging designs before a full-scale shelf life study is conducted.
- Gaining preliminary data to guide decisions about storage recommendations and expiration dates.
Need guidance? Not all products are suitable for accelerated studies, and understanding whether this approach is appropriate for your product requires expert input. Contact our team today to discuss your product’s specific needs and learn more about how accelerated studies may complement your quality assurance program.
Challenge Studies
Challenge studies are critical for understanding how your product may respond to potential pathogen contamination and for validating the effectiveness of control measures. These studies involve deliberately inoculating products with specific microorganisms under controlled conditions to evaluate their growth, survival, or inactivation over time. This approach allows manufacturers to gain valuable insights into the microbial behavior of their product and ensures that it meets both safety standards and regulatory requirements.
Challenge studies typically address questions such as:
- Pathogen Growth Potential: Can pathogens such as Listeria monocytogenes, Salmonella, or E. coli survive or grow in your product under normal storage conditions?
- Effectiveness of Control Measures: How effective are your processes, such as heat treatments, preservatives, pH control, or modified atmosphere packaging, at preventing or limiting microbial growth?
- Shelf Life Safety: Does your product remain microbiologically safe throughout its intended shelf life, even under worst-case scenarios?
Whether you’re validating a new formulation, meeting regulatory requirements, or preparing for a customer audit, challenge studies can provide the confidence you need to ensure your product’s safety. Contact our team to discuss how a tailored challenge study can help you better understand your product’s resilience to contamination and support your food safety goals.
Validation Studies
Validation studies are essential for ensuring that your processes, methods, and control measures are scientifically sound, effective, and compliant with regulatory requirements. These studies provide the data and confidence needed to demonstrate that your products meet the highest standards of safety, quality, and compliance.
Process Validation
Process validation involves evaluating the effectiveness of key control measures, such as heat treatments, pasteurization, freezing, or packaging systems, to mitigate risks associated with microbial contamination. This ensures your processes consistently achieve the desired safety outcomes under normal operating conditions.
Examples of process validation include:
- Thermal Validation: Verifying that heat treatments, such as pasteurization or cooking, effectively inactivate pathogens (such as Salmonella) in specific product matrices. This process typically involves the use of an appropriate surrogate organism, controlled product inoculation, heat treatment, and subsequent enumeration to confirm achievement of specific log-reduction targets tailored to the client’s goals and matrix requirements.
- Packaging Validation: Assessing the effectiveness of modified atmosphere or vacuum packaging in inhibiting microbial growth during storage.
- Sanitization Validation: Demonstrating the efficacy of sanitation procedures for equipment or surfaces in preventing cross-contamination.
Our expertise in analyzing chemical stability extends to complex matrices, allowing us to provide tailored insights specific to your product type.
Method Validation
Method validation ensures that the analytical methods used for testing your products are accurate, precise, and fit for their intended purpose. This is especially critical when testing complex or unique matrices that may interfere with standard testing protocols.
Key aspects of method validation include:
- Specificity: Confirming the method accurately measures the target analyte without interference from other components.
- Precision and Accuracy: Verifying that the method produces consistent and reliable results across multiple trials and operators.
- Matrix Suitability: Ensuring the method works effectively for your specific product, whether it’s a high-fat matrix like nut butter, a low-water-activity product, or a complex matrix with multiple ingredients and potential interferences.
By validating your methods, we help you maintain confidence in your testing results and compliance with your regulatory requirements.
Why Choose QuanTEM for Special Projects?
- Expertise in microbiology, chemistry, and regulatory compliance.
- Robust and trusted methodologies and approaches tailored to your unique products and processes.
- Detailed, actionable results to support decision-making and compliance.
- A commitment to precision, communication, and personalized service.
From routine evaluations to complex studies, QuanTEM Food Safety Laboratories is your trusted partner for Special Projects. Contact us today to discuss how we can support your goals with expert guidance and innovative solutions.