SCIEX Responds to Increasing Demand in Food Safety Testing

New software application, chemistry and pre-packaged methods form complete mass spectrometry workflow solution

Recent changes to food safety regulations have resulted in the need for laboratories to improve the way they test for contaminants. As a trusted partner with the food testing industry, SCIEX is responding to this increasing demand by delivering the industry's most complete mass spectrometry solution available to screen, identify, and quantify hundreds of pesticides in a single run. This solution includes the new iDQuant^TM Standards Kit for Pesticide Analysis, iMethod^TM Test for Pesticide Screening, iMethod^TM Pesticide Screening Library and a new version of Cliquid^® Software. These new tools are expected to help further break the barrier of the food testing community adopting tandem mass spectrometry technologies, such as QTRAP^® technology, for quantitative and qualitative analysis. These tools are on display at the ASMS conference in Denver this week.

New food protection laws in several countries are requiring more stringent food testing procedures, which require more powerful technologies that can identify contaminants, faster and in smaller quantities. Facing tough challenges to identify a wider range of contaminants and in less time, scientists and lab analysts are seeking solutions that deliver the highest confidence in results while eliminating complexity.

To address these challenges, SCIEX has been working closely with a variety of food testing experts to develop new Cliquid^® Software-based solutions that better meet their needs for faster, more detailed answers, more intuitive controls and improved built-in library searching.  Cliquid^® Software, combined with iMethod^TM Tests, forms the basis of solutions that enable scientists to identify unknown compounds much more easily.

The new solutions, which are optimized for use on SCIEX mass spectrometers, include the following:

• New chemistry standards kit, called the iDQuant^TM Standards Kit.  Used with Cliquid Software, the first kit available in this new product family will be the iDQuant Standards Kit for Pesticide Analysis.  It is designed to improve efficiency and help turn around samples in less time, eliminating the need to source pesticides individually and measure pesticides manually.  This allows lab analysts to verify and validate the performance of the method more easily. With this new standards kit, SCIEX is enabling scientists to detect pesticides faster and more efficiently without sacrificing quality.

• New iMethod^TM Test for Pesticide Analysis, which contains pre-packaged, validated test methods for easy adoption in laboratories, complying with industry standards and ensuring reproducibility.

• New version of Cliquid Software for Routine Analysis, which surpasses any software package available to simplify mass spectrometry for researchers or lab analysts who do not have experience with mass spectrometry technology. Cliquid can now be connected to any LIMS network, improving the efficiency of advancing results generated on an SCIEX mass spectrometer to the next stage of analysis and interpretation.

Joe Anacleto, Vice President and General Manager of the Applied Markets and Clinical Research Business, SCIEX

"SCIEX is committed to helping our customers in the food safety and environmental testing fields push the limits of simplicity and functionality in routine analysis to meet higher expectations and deliver measurable improvements in productivity and efficiency. Scientists and lab analysts are seeking reliable, easy-to-use solutions that will serve their needs today as well as tomorrow. Our extensive experience in investigative analysis enables us to help food testing laboratories deal with the fundamental changes redefining the landscape across applied science."