Analysis

des Denrées alimentaires

The Food Analysis Laboratory was created in 1980 by Prof. Emeritus Guy Maghuin-Rogister. From the start, the laboratory has been concerned with the development of methods for analyzing residues of veterinary drugs and other prohibited products (hormones) in animal products.

The twenty-five years of the laboratory were the subject of a half-day study, on May 11, 2005, entitled: "Residues and contaminants in foodstuffs: 25 years of progress in their analysis". The texts of the conferences have been published in the Annales de Médecine Vétérinaire, vol. 149 (No. 4) and vol. 150 (Nos. 2 and 3).

For several years, the Food Analysis Laboratory was an official control laboratory for the Institute of Veterinary Expertise (IEV), and in 1998 obtained EN-45001 accreditation (European standard currently replaced by ISO standard 17025) for his methods of analysis of hormone residues in the fat and urine of production animals. At the time, it was one of the very first accredited laboratories of the University of Liège.

At the time of the dioxin crisis, in 1999, the laboratory was one of the 4 founding members of CART (formerly Center for Analysis of Residues in Traces, act. Center for Analytical Research and Technology), an interuniversity center founded to deal with to the crisis by offering the Belgian authorities a set of high-performance laboratories for the analysis of PCBs and dioxins in food. The laboratory then extended the “scope” of its accreditation to the analysis of PCBs. It subsequently maintained its accreditation within a quality system common to the entire CART. Currently, the analysis of PCBs has been taken over by the FASFC within its own laboratories, but the CART is the national reference laboratory for the analysis of dioxins in food.

In 2011, the Foodstuffs Analysis Laboratory, within the Department of Foodstuffs Sciences, is still specialized in the analysis and toxicology of residues in foodstuffs and in particular in the study of residues of veterinary drugs, contaminants from the environment or formed during the transformation process (antibiotics, dioxins and PCBs, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, etc.). His research activities concern the development of physicochemical analysis methods (GC and LC/MS), but also biochemical ones, by means, in particular, of cell cultures. The substances studied using these tests are, in addition to the residues and contaminants mentioned above, endocrine disruptors: industrial products or natural substances, likely to contaminate our food, and which can disrupt the hormonal system. As part of the projects of the Walloon WAGRALIM competitiveness cluster, the laboratory also addresses nutritional aspects by studying the stability of polyunsaturated fatty acids in foods.

The results obtained during the research activities carried out in collaboration with the private sector and other Belgian and international universities, in addition to numerous consultancy activities for the FASFC and the Superior Health Council, in particular, make it possible to integrate and to update a certain amount of knowledge in the field of chemical risks related to food, knowledge which is delivered to students within the framework of the courses given in the master's degree in veterinary medicine and in the complementary master's degree in specialized veterinary medicine.