Finding Adulteration Even When Not Looking For It

Leading the way with non-targeted screening

When you search for something specific, that’s probably all you are likely to find. By removing the constraints of targeted analysis and searching without restriction, Eurofins has opened up a whole world of new possibilities.

Eurofins’ evolution of non-targeted screening methods is one of the company’s most exciting developments. Teams from across the company have pioneered wider screening techniques covering a range of sectors, from food and pharmaceutical, to environment and water. A very prominent example of an unexpected, and hence missed issue that evolved into a scandal was the addition of the industrial chemical melamine found in baby milk in China in 2008. Another was the addition of horse meat to beef in Europe in 2013. Such fraudulent practices were never expected and so were not explicitly searched for. Non-targeted screening tests are enabling a whole variety of industries to better guard against health crises.

High-resolution nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) testing is one example for such an untargeted screening approach. Eurofins’ method is now able to provide additional insights to those offered through conventional approaches. This investigative technique allows for the detection of hidden anomalies, such as the addition of sugar to honey, or the mislabelling of geographical or botanical origins in the composition of a complex matrix. The approach can be applied to liquids or extracts from solid foods, requiring only limited preparation of the sample.

Another pioneering technique from Eurofins’ laboratories is a new nontargeted screening method, based on 16S rDNA screening and Next Generation Sequencing. Used to profile the microbiome of food, pharmaceutical and environmental samples, the test focuses on identifying the microorganism communities present, helping to recognise a broad spectrum of bacteria. For example, the test can be used for the control of fermentation processes or the analysis of biofilms (a thin microbial layer). The tests require no assumption to be made about a given species of interest, and all species included in the database can be identified in one test.

These sophisticated testing methods also have numerous applications in the environmental world. Eurofins Miljø has, in cooperation with University of Copenhagen, Denmark, developed the two untargeted methods, ChemFingSOIL® and ChemFingAIR™, to address environmental hydrocarbon pollution in soil and indoor air.

The first commercial project to use ChemFingSOIL® was launched in February 2017. In 2021, it was followed by ChemFingAIR™, which uses advanced data modelling to determine the contribution and flux of volatile pollutants from underlying soil pollution to the indoor environment of a house. Similarly, Eurofins Miljø also participates in several public funded R&D projects with the aim of leveraging non-targeted chemical fingerprinting and screening through HRMS (high resolution mass spectrometry) to industrial application in the environmental Industry. The company is currently taking part in the AQUAPLEXUS project, which aims to develop and standardise testing methods to ensure drinking water is safe for human consumption.

In 2020, Eurofins Analytics France launched the ongoing TOFoo® (True Organic Food) project, a collaborative research project supported by the French State, which aims to develop analyses to ensure the integrity of organic food products. Through the project, the Eurofins company and its research partners have developed a multitechnical and non-targeted screening method to distinguish organic from conventional UHT milk and tomatoes. The method relies on an extensive database of organic and conventional reference samples, collected over several years as part of the project, which was used to build statistical models based on artificial intelligence. Thanks to the non-targeted nature of the technique, it is able to reveal intrinsic characteristics linked to specific farming practices in the organic sector, without narrowing analyses to a particular substance or family of molecules.

And this is only the beginning. Eurofins Analytics France is conducting further research on different organic food products, with other analytical techniques currently underway, while other Eurofins laboratories globally are also developing a whole range of other non-targeted screening techniques. Eurofins’ insights are helping to ensure that consumers and the wider world at large are fully informed about exactly what is in the products we all consume.

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