In recent years, food safety and quality problems have received more and more attention. Here said the food is in the broad sense, including primary agricultural products, such as: grain and oil seeds, fruit, vegetables, aquatic products, livestock and poultry products etc, also including processed food, such as: canned, sausage, pickled vegetables, spices, cooking oil, instant noodles, etc. There are also growing laboratories for food testing. In these laboratories, due to different nature and different testing projects, there are different requirements for the acquisition and selection of instruments in the preparation and development of the laboratory.

Enterprise laboratory
The enterprise laboratory can be set up according to the product variety, the number of test items and the size of the production scale. The configuration of laboratory instruments and equipment can be complicated and simple. For such a laboratory, the equipment and equipment can be configured to meet the quality inspection of the products.
The food inspection department is divided into two main items, one is the quality item that detects the product; The second is to test the health project of the product, the detection of this kind of project is relatively difficult, the investment is high.
(1) quality items include:
Water, salt content, sugar content, protein content, fat content, fiber content, vitamin content, acidity, etc. For the detection of the project, if the budget is limited, can by using chemical analysis, just make the most simple oven, water bath, electric furnace, mixer, crusher, pH meter and other equipment.
If there are sufficient funds or lots of test batches, the corresponding test items have corresponding special instruments available for purchase. In addition, there are some general instruments available for purchase, such as uv/visible spectrophotometer, near-infrared analyzer, automatic titrator, etc. It is necessary to test vitamin A, E and other times. The detection of nutrient elements, such as calcium, zinc, iron, etc., can purchase atomic absorption-flame detector.
(2) health projects include:
Microorganisms, additives, harmful elements, pesticide residues, veterinary drug residues, toxins, etc. For general food companies, microbial testing laboratories should be built.

Commercial laboratory
Commercial laboratory compared with corporate laboratories, the inspection of goods and the project is more than the enterprise, so the instruments and equipment configuration from the category and quantity should be more perfect than corporate laboratories. The configuration of instrument and equipment can not only meet the needs of current detection, but also should be appropriately advanced, otherwise, it will be difficult for customers to find their way to be pushed away by you.
1) inspection quality items shall normally be considered standard or according to customer requirements, and shall be equipped with corresponding testing instruments and equipment. Due to different goods and different customers can be on the same project may be different test standard or method is put forward, for the detection of the project, if the method stipulated by using chemical analysis, only need to configure the most simple equipment. If adequate or inspection batch is more, the corresponding detection methods and instrument method, configurable corresponding specialized instruments, such as: moisture meter and kjeldahl nitrogen determination apparatus, rapid fat tester, sugar, viscometer, such as fatty acid analyzer, general instrument can also be a reference to enterprise laboratory quality project. A dedicated analyzer such as an amino acid analyzer can be configured if needed.
2) laboratory configuration for health project testing, see the relevant paragraphs of "1. Enterprise LABS". Personally think that for a modern commercial laboratory liquid chromatography - tandem mass spectrometry, gas chromatography - mass spectrometry is cannot little, this is now to disable the agriculture veterinary drug residue positive report issued directives and standard requirements of conditions. If you have more scale and test items. Each type of instrument should also be equipped with multiple sets. At this time, the complementary of instrument performance should be considered, such as: liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry, a distribution spray ionization source, a chemical ionization source with atmospheric pressure; Gas chromatography-mass spectra with an electron bombardment source, a negative chemical ionization source. It can also consider the preparation of plasma emission spectra - mass spectrometer, gas chromatography-tandem mass spectrometer, etc. If morphological analysis is to be done, plasma emission spectra - mass spectrometer should also be used in conjunction with liquid chromatography or gas chromatography.

3. Industrial laboratory
China’s industry LABS (the government regulations laboratory) are affiliated with different administrative agencies of the industry. So it has a little bit of administrative effect. In recent years, the government has attached great importance to food safety and increased investment, so the hardware of the laboratory has been greatly improved. At present, a more perfect industry laboratory (above the provincial and municipal), in addition to the analysis of the test equipment category and amount should be equal to or better than that of the general business outside a laboratory, to improve the efficiency of analysis can also be more perfect in pre-treatment equipment, such as: weibo digestion (including: microwave extraction), automatic solid-phase extraction apparatus, gel chromatography purification, accelerated solvent extraction apparatus, high-speed refrigerated centrifuge, high speed homogenizer, blowing nitrogen, the former processing equipment such as higher efficiency, higher degree of automation (automatic processing samples available at night time), and can improve the reproducibility of results.

Along with our country’s administrative supervision system is working with the international community, developed countries more and more our industry laboratory’s ability to take part in some international authority than activities, testing methods and results are carried out in accordance with international practice. In addition, in order to adapt to the development of food safety testing, many laboratories are developing new analytical methods. Therefore, the industry lab will later configure higher-end analytical instruments such as high resolution mass spectrometer to make the final test results more accurate.