Food testing companies, such as Invisible Sentinel, are looking for ways to make food testing faster, more accurate and less expensive.
Nothing unnerves consumers more and drives them away from a restaurant, food or beverage faster than a flurry of headlines about people being sickened by dreaded bacteria like E. coli or listeria, the New York Times reported.
Just ask Chipotle Mexican Grill, which has been scrambling to recover from a multi-state E. coli outbreak that drove the company’s stock down more than 40% and has resulted in a class-action lawsuit. Or Blue Bell Creameries, which faced several recalls and factory shutdowns and now faces a Department of Justice investigation in connection with listeria contamination of its ice cream, the Times reported.
But often, troubles for one business can mean opportunities for others. And the competitive field of food testing is one. It requires sophisticated scientific and technological skills and is far from the easiest point-of-entry for a small start-up. One Philadelphia biotech company led by a pair of entrepreneurs is hoping it has found a niche, the Times reported.
The company, Invisible Sentinel, has developed a patented technology called Veriflow that uses a hand-held device to detect the DNA of micro-organisms like E. coli, salmonella and listeria quickly and at a relatively affordable price. The technology has been approved by AOAC International, an association that sets standards for microbial food testing, the Times reported.
“It’s like a pregnancy test, one line negative and two lines positive, except that it’s amplified DNA that you’re reading,” said Benjamin Pascal, a co-founder of Invisible Sentinel.
Today, according to Invisible Sentinel, 114 companies in the United States and more than 50 internationally use the technology at more than 250 different sites in 18 countries. Wawa Inc., which owns dairy and beverage manufacturing plants as well as 715 convenience stores in six states, tested Veriflow for about six months before signing on in March 2013. “Invisible Sentinel’s technology was two to three times faster than others,” said Chris Gheysens, the company’s chief executive.
Dawn Norton, director of food safety at WholeVine Products in Santa Rosa, Calif., said her company, which produces a variety of products from grape seeds and skins, has begun using Veriflow to make sure its plant equipment and surfaces are pathogen-free. Large food companies with in-house labs often pay tens of thousands of dollars for equipment and usually need highly trained lab technicians or microbiologists to run them, the Times reported.
Invisible Sentinel can set up an in-house lab for about $5,000 and train almost anyone to use it in less than a day. The in-house labs are particularly attractive to wine companies, which can use them to test for spoilage organisms at individual wineries rather than having to ship samples out for testing. “It allows us to do more testing with the same budget,” said Torey Arvik, a former technical director at Jackson Family Wines who now works for WholeVine.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, each year, about one in six Americans becomes sick from contaminated foods or beverages and 3,000 people die. Globally, two billion tests are done annually for pathogens and spoilage organisms, and the rate is growing at about 5 percent a year, said Thomas R. Weschler, founder of Strategic Consulting Inc., a research and consulting firm in the industrial diagnostics industry
Some of that growth is a result of the Food Safety Modernization Act, which President Obama signed into law in 2011. Considered the most sweeping reform of food safety laws in more than 70 years, it was intended to shift the focus from responding to contamination to preventing it, the Times reported.
Companies, no matter how tight their profit margins, cannot afford to skimp on food testing. Recalls and reports of E. coli outbreaks can damage a brand, sometimes irreparably. “It’s the worst possible public relations nightmare you can face,” Robert Passikoff, founder and president of Brand Keys, a brand research and consulting firm.
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