PerkinElmer Expertise and Solutions Integral to Food Safety Monitoring for the Beijing Games

PerkinElmer, Inc., a global leader in Health Sciences and Photonics, today announced that its analytical solutions are being used by the Beijing Municipal Center for Food Safety Monitoring (BFSM) in a mobile laboratory supporting the Beijing Games. PerkinElmer instrumentation, software and expertise are supporting testing for volatile organic compounds in beverages and pesticides in food products.

Since the fall of 2007, PerkinElmer has provided a dedicated applications expert to BFSM, working onsite at the headquarters laboratory to help guide development of methods and applications to support the laboratory and help ensure the safety of the food supply for residents. This expert helped deploy the methods to a mobile lab to support the influx of athletes and international visitors to Beijing expected in August and September. More than 10,000 athletes are expected to dine in the village for sporting teams and an additional 500,000 visitors are anticipated to watch the action and participate in the festivities.

“As part of fulfilling PerkinElmer’s commitment to global health and well-being, we are thrilled to provide expertise, insights and solutions through our Shanghai Global Application Center to the Beijing Center,” said Richard Begley, Ph.D., president, Analytical Sciences, PerkinElmer. “Food safety is a key platform in our EcoAnalytix™ initiative, which addresses the global imperatives of food and consumer product safety, water quality and sustainable energy development to create a healthy and safe environment.”

Collaborating with PerkinElmer on method development on the Clarus^® Gas Chromatograph/Mass Spectrometer (GC/MS) for the detection of contaminants such as pesticides has accelerated BFSM’s capability to conduct accurate analysis and evaluation on food. “We have now transferred this capability to a mobile lab to be closer to the source of the food we need to test,” said Lu Yong, director of BFSM.

PerkinElmer is offering on-call support and technical assistance to the mobile laboratory during the Beijing events and on-going support of BFSM’s headquarters and satellite laboratories in their continued development of methods and applications to help ensure the ongoing safety of the Beijing food supply. PerkinElmer is supporting technical and application development assistance in the areas of gas chromatography (GC), gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC/MS), atomic absorption (AA), high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (ICP-MS).

PerkinElmer has supported scientists across the world for 70 years in the analysis of the nutritional composition and quality as well as the types and levels of contaminants in foods and beverages. The Company’s Clarus^® 600 GC/MS, TurboMatrix™ Headspace Trap and ELAN^® DRC™ II ICP-MS are being used for the Beijing testing.

BFSM was established by the Beijing Food Safety Administration in 2004 to provide technical support for food safety management of the Beijing municipal government and to support food safety for the international sporting events in 2008.