WHO YOU GONNA CALL?
FOOD FORENSICS…THAT’S WHO!
Tracing how ginger hairs
got into an on-online filter
at a milk company is one of
the memorable tasks ESR
food forensic scientists
have had to investigate.
“We identified it as coming from a
cat, so you get this image of the cat
waiting until night time and jumping
into the vat,” food forensic scientist
Darren Saunders says. “Literally, the
cat that got the cream!” ESR scientists
have a number of ways of working
out whether an object found in food
has been put there maliciously or
accidentally. While the work food
scientists at ESR do is quite variable,
they receive complaints about foreign
materials in food on a regular basis.
There have been several cases that
have hit the headlines recently of fresh
produce containing foreign objects
such as needles. It’s a scenario that
ESR has encountered from time to
time, Saunders says. One of the
first things to look at in such cases
is if there are fingerprints or DNA
on the container. “Then there is the
identification of the foreign objects
themselves – if you have a thumb tack,
needle or a pin, you look at simple
measurements like dimensions, then
compare it to what’s commercially
available, analyse its composition
– what sort of metal is it – where
are these available and so forth,”
Saunders says. Foreign objects in
food are one of the big concerns
ESR gets from manufacturers and
suppliers, wanting to know where
the responsibility lies. “They will
want to know if it is a malicious case
of someone inserting, for instance,
something sharp and horrible into
their bread. They’ll want to know
whether it was baked in. We had a
series of cases with needles found in
baked bread and you could tell from
the bag by the tiny holes in it that
something had been inserted and
which direction it came from – that
is from the outside,” Saunders says.
Another complaint ESR frequently
gets relates to suspect rodent
droppings, which can be hard to tell
from bits of burnt grease or other
food ingredients. “But under the
microscope, you’ll find faecal material
which contains the rodent’s hair. That’s
because they’re always grooming
and consuming their own hair, and
hair can often be identified down to a
species level. Mice hairs for instance
are very characteristic.” ESR is a
crown research institute that provides
science services and research
capability across a number of science
disciplines. www.esr.cri.nz
88 ANNUAL DIRECTORY 2019
/www.esr.cri.nz
