In an overall evaluation of the situation published by IARC in 1993, beryllium and beryllium compounds are identified as carcinogens to humans. This prompted the initiation of this study on beryllium which reviews the situation up to 1998 on the aspects: properties and applications, toxicity, analytical procedures for food and drinking water, reference materials, occurrence in food and drinking water and estimates of daily dietary exposure. Special emphasis is put on analytical aspects and levels of beryllium in food and drinking water.

The sterile insect technique is used to manage or control fruit flies throughout the world. The technique relies on large scale production before delivery to release managers. As part of the mass production phase, there are many quality control tests to demonstrate and maintain high quality pupae and flies. One highly desirable characteristic is adults with a long life so that these adults can reach sexual maturity and sterile males mate with wild fertile flies in the field and thus produce no viable offspring. Originally longevity was assessed allowing adults to have unlimited access to food and water. As quality and longevity increased, this methodology added significantly to workload and space demands and many facilities moved to testing longevity under stress where no food or water was provided. Here we examined >27,000 Queensland fruit fly Bactrocera tryoni (Froggatt) from 160 weekly production batches from July 2004 to October 2009 where flies were not provided food or water. The mean longevity was 54.4 ± SE hours. Longevity was significantly shorter from August to March, and the longevity was significantly longer in June. Longevity was not related to pupal weight, contrary to expectations. Weights were significantly lower in June and highest in summer.

The Pacific lamprey is an iconic native fish of great importance to the ecosystem and indigenous cultures in the U.S. Pacific Northwest. Pacific lamprey populations have declined in abundance from historic levels, and conservation aquaculture has been proposed as a technique to restore these populations. The present research focused on expanding the culture methods for larval lamprey. The larvae filter feed and cohabitate with juvenile salmonids in the wild, therefore the effluent water from rearing salmonids may be a viable source of water and food for culturing lamprey. This approach could be a sustainable method for raising lamprey at existing salmonid hatcheries. A nine week trial investigated the effects of rearing in effluent water from salmonid culture on the growth, survival, proximate composition, and fatty acid profile of larval lamprey. This trial also explored the potential of this rearing strategy to improve the water quality by removing nutrients from the effluent. The trial included three treatments testing the use of the effluent from steelhead trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss), a conventional lamprey diet (control diet), or both combined as a means for rearing lamprey. A fourth treatment where lamprey were excluded served as a water quality control to test the effect of lamprey presence on effluent quality. Lamprey survival was not affected by treatment. Lamprey reared solely on the effluent waste matched the survival and growth of fish fed the conventional diet. Lamprey fed the combination treatment grew faster than the conventional diet fed fish. Whole body lipid levels were elevated in lamprey from the combination treatment relative to the conventional diet fed lamprey. Crude protein in the whole bodies of effluent fed lamprey was low compared to fish from either of the treatments where the conventional diet was fed. Lamprey offered the effluent nutrients were high in saturated fats relative to the control fed fish, which reflected the lipid profile of this diet. However, lamprey from the combination treatment were lower in long chain polyunsaturated fatty acids relative to the control or the effluent treatment lamprey. There was no measureable improvement in water quality due to the presence of lamprey, though lamprey were able to sequester approximately 1.3% of the effluent dry matter as lamprey biomass. Overall, it appears the larval stage of lamprey can be effectively reared on salmonid effluent, and this method provides superior growth when used in combination with a conventional lamprey diet.

Foodborne bacterial infection poses a serious threat to human health. As most diseases are caused by living bacteria, real-time assessment of bacterial viability is vitally important to the public health sector. Herein, we developed a simple and novel colorimetric assay based on the Glucose oxidase (GOD)/Horseradish peroxidase (HRP) bienzyme system for real-time monitoring of bacterial viability in food and drinking water. This bienzyme system is free of any chemical synthesis and only requires 3 sample handling steps. The color response is easily observable with the naked eye or recordable with a smartphone for precise determination of bacterial viability. The proposed strategy was validated with various bacteria both Gram-positive and Gram-negative, indicating its capability for broad-spectrum bacteria viability detection. Therefore, the proposed strategy shows promise for rapid and reliable quality control in food and drinking water.

The expanding demands of consumers requires food quality control to be improved all the time. Higher concentration of biogenic amines can lead to food toxicity, for example they can cause migraine headaches in people who consume products rich of serotonin or tyramine. Methylxanthines (caffeine and metabolites) can also have side effects to human comfort – high doses can lead to unrest, irritation or insomnia. Most vitamins are supplied to humans only as a part of food meals or dietary supplements. Knowledge about their concentration in food can be useful for composing various diets. In this work specification of complete sample preparation parameters for extraction of the compounds from food matrices has been reviewed. Particular attention was given to the preparation stage as well as to extraction methods that have been used. The second part of the work presents data from chromatographic methods for determination and separation of selected biogenic amines, methylxanthines and water-soluble vitamins in food. Stationary and mobile phases, detection methods as well as validation data have been reviewed. This publication is a comprehensive compendium of analytical procedures for food analyses of the previously mentioned compounds.

A rapid and non-destructive method based in time domain reflectometry analysis (TDR), which detects and quantifies the water content in the muscle, was developed for the control of abusive water addition to octopus. Common octopus samples were immersed in freshwater for different periods (0.5–32 h) to give a wide range of moisture contents, representing different commercial conditions. Control and water-added octopus were analyzed with a TDR sensor, and data correlated with moisture content were used for calibration and method validation. A maximum limit of moisture content of 85.2 g/100 g in octopus is proposed for conformity assessment, unless the label indicates that water (>5%) was added. Calibration results showed that TDR analysis can discriminate control and water-added octopus, especially for octopus immersed for longer periods (32 h). In addition, moisture content can be quantified in octopus using only TDR analysis (between 80 and 90 g/100 g; RMSE = 1.1%). TDR data and correlation with moisture content show that this non-destructive methodology can be used by the industry and quality control inspections for assessment of octopus quality and to verify compliance with legislation, promoting fair trade practices, and further contributing to a sustainable use of resources.