California State Food Safety and Security Monitoring Project

FDA FERN Cooperative Agreement Continuation Program (U18)Project Summary/AbstractA primary focus of the Food and Drug Laboratory Branch (FDLB) Chemistry Section is themonitoring of food and drug products to ensure a safe supply for public consumption. Personneltrained in the analysis of food matrices for the detection of toxins would continue to provideanalytical support with sample analysis in the event of large scale food adulteration events. Inaddition, participation in ongoing matrix validation and proficiency testing by GasChromatography - Mass Spectrometry (GC-MS), Liquid Chromatography - Mass Spectrometry(LC-MS) and Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry (ICP-MS) will continue toadvance staff skills and improve the laboratory's response to food emergencies. The analyticalexpertise developed by these activities will provide the basis for the enhancement of currentmethodology by expanding LC-MS toxin screens to polar compounds that are not well detectedby current FERN techniques. LC-MS methods will be developed for the detection of marinetoxins in seafoods. ICP-MS methods will be expanded to include speciation of arsenic in avariety of seafood matrices. GC-MS screening will be used in surveillance of supplements forunlabeled and illegal ingredients. A further area of study will be the investigation of marinetoxins by LC-MS and Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay (ELISA).