Workshop on Advanced Methods in Food Microbiology and Chemistry

Food safety and security become more and more important in our daily life in Hong Kong. Therefore, one of suggestions from industry to Hong Kong Council of Testing and Certification (HKCEC) is to enhance Food Testing and Legislation. To benefit management of food safety and security, a Workshop on Advanced Methods in Food Microbiology and Chemistry was introduced by Dr. Richard Cheung (Workshop leader) in BCH Dept., City University of Hong Kong (CityU) and co-organized by Hong Kong Productivity Council (HKPC) from 10 to 12 Nov 2009. Hong Kong Society for Quality was one of the supporting organizations. Dr. KS Chin (Asso. Prof, MEEM Dept. in CityU) and Dr. Aaron Tong (Managing Director, TQM Consultants Co. Ltd.) represented HKSQ to present a talk named “Quality Assurance in Food Industry”. I attended the morning session on 12 Nov 2009 and summarized as follows.



Dr. KS Chin shared some fundamental quality knowledge such as quality control, quality assurance, and quality audit. Moreover, he briefed the concept of Total Quality Engineering. After that he discussed some good practices for food safety including:
- GAP: Good Agricultural Practices
- GHP: Good Handling Practices
- GMP: Good Manufacturing Practices
- HACCP: Hazard Analysis Critical Control Points
- ISO 9001
- ISO 22000, etc.

At the end, he mentioned the procedures and methods of quality control in Food Industry. Preventive measures were emphasized to ensure raw material quality.

Then Dr. Aaron Tong shared his consultancy experience in food industry. He introduced different types of food testing such as Microbiology Analysis, Chemical Analysis, Pesticides, Antibiotics, Food Additives, Heavy Metals and GMO. He also showed different food related certification schemes including HACCP/GMP, ISO 22000, BRC, IFS, Global-GAP, ISO 9001, ISO 14001 and OHSAS 18001, etc.

He selected some QA/QC programs which are designed specifically for Food Industries as follows:
1. Food Processing 5S Management System
2. HACCP Assessment
3. LEAN Manufacturing in Food Production
4. Procurement Management
5. Supply Chain Management

During Q&A session, I asked any common faults has been found in food industry. Dr. Tong said it was cross-contamination due to limitation of storage / working area. It is very specific in Hong Kong. One of the suggested solutions was to separate food processing steps in time-based management.

The topic of Dr. Michael Lam (Asso. Professor in BCH Dept., CityU) was “Detection of Paralytic Shellfish Toxins & Other Algal Toxins”. In the beginning, some food safety problems was reminded as follows:
- Natural (bio-) toxins such as mycotoxins, marine biotoxins, cyanogenic glycosides and toxins in poisonous mushrooms;
- Metals, metalloids and organometallic compounds such as lead, mercury, arsenic, etc;
- Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) such as organochlorine pesticides, polychlorinated, dioxins, etc.

There were some shellfish poisoning introduced as follows:
- Amnesic Shellfish Poisoning (ASP)
- Diarrheic Shellfish Poisoning (DSP)
- Neurotoxic Shellfish Poisoning (NSP)
- Paralytic Shellfish Poisoning (PSP)

After that he introduced some analytical methods for shellfish poisoning toxin such as AOAC 2005.06 for PSP. The Oshima method for saxitoxin determination uses HPLC post-column derviatization fluorescent detection (Throughput ~ 0.5 hr per injection). The trend is to use LCMS which can analyze different toxins per injection (Throughput ~ 2hr per injection). But the standard is very expensive such as Ciguatoxin which costs HK$9000 per 1 microgram.

During lunch, I talked with Prof. Daniel Fung (Professor of Food Science, Kansas State University). He is a pioneer in the field of Rapid Methods and Automation in Food Microbiology. It is pity that I did not attend his talk entitled “World Market Trends and Prediction of the Future of Rapid Methods in Food Microbiology”.

I hope that kind of excellence workshop could be performed regularly.