Food Allergens/Adulterations Neogen has greatly expanded the number and variety of rapid food allergen test kits it offers with its recent acquisition of the BioKits food allergen test product line from Tepnel. The BioKits microwell assay test kits are available for the quantification of allergens in foods and environmental surfaces in the low parts per million level (ppm). The BioKits food adulteration kits are microwell assays for wheat and soy adulteration in pasta and meats respectively.
Species Identification The identification of species content is performed in many countries for a variety of reasons including economic, ethnic and safety. Such identification may be designed to prevent the substitution of meat destined for human consumption with that of unsuitable or inferior species, or may be of importance in various religious communities where consumption of a particular species is proscribed. Concern about the consumption of ruminants (cattle, sheep) infected with bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE, a.k.a. "mad cow" disease) led the FDA to ban the feeding of rendered ruminant by-products, such as meat and bone meal (MBM), to other ruminants. Neogen Corporation supplies a variety of test methods including lateral flow, microwell, and PCR (DNA) based methods for species identification.
