With the continuous improvement of food technology, the research and use of food additives have reached a very mature level. In order to enable food operators, food inspectors and food regulators to better grasp and understand the rules for the use of food additives, the principle of carry-over was put forward in Clause 3.4 of the 2007 edition of GB 2760, National Standard for the Use of Food Additives for Food Safety, and in the 2014 edition. In the 2014 edition, clause 3.4.1.2 was added to the 2007 edition.

In this paper, we focus on the application of the carry-over principle of food additives in food sampling according to the requirements of national food safety standards and practical experience in food testing.

Interpretation of clause 3.4 in GB 2760-2014

The so-called bring in refers to the food additives through food production from food ingredients to the final food or food additives added to the production of a food raw materials in advance of these two cases.

The GB 2760-2014 standard is divided into 3.4.1 and 3.4.2 clauses, which stipulate two principles of use respectively: the principle of the use of food additives in food ingredients that are brought into the final product; and the principle of the use of food additives that are not allowed to be added to the raw material itself but are allowed to be added to the final product.

Clause 3.4.1 stipulates that the following conditions must be met in order to comply with the carry-over principle: according to GB 2760-2014 standard, the food additive is allowed to be used in food ingredients but should not exceed the limit, and the content of the additive detected in the final food should be far below or lower than the product of the maximum limit of the food additive in food ingredients and the normal proportion of the ingredient under normal proportion of the ingredient.

3.4.2 states that the addition of a food additive permitted for use in the final food product is permitted only if it becomes a specific food ingredient of a particular food final product, but should not exceed the limit [1].

Principle of food additive carryover

Application in food testing in this laboratory

I. Principle of Ingredient Carryover

Since the establishment of the Laboratory in 2008, there have been cases of carry-over of additives such as benzoic acid and sorbic acid into the provisions of 3.4.1 of the Principles during the testing process.

The most common cases of carry-over were found in samples of pasta, especially meat buns, which was mainly because the meat filling used in the production of these food products required seasonings such as soy sauce, and the maximum use level of benzoic acid and its sodium salt in soy sauce was 1000 mg/kg, and the food operators used soy sauce with a high level of preservative additives, and from the viewpoint of the residual amount of benzoic acid in the final product, it is more likely to be carried over to the final product of buns through soy sauce. the final product buns was more likely.

The other is vegetable buns, which are usually filled with pickled vegetables such as snow peas and sauerkraut, and the maximum use level of benzoic acid and its sodium salt in pickled vegetables is 1,000 mg/kg. According to the residual amount of benzoic acid in the final product, it is more likely that it will be introduced into the final product of buns through the pickled vegetables in the filling. Benzoic acid in flavored soybean products also had a higher likelihood of being carried over from the topping sauce or pickles.

Sample buns of ready-to-sell pasta products in the catering industry had sorbic acid carried over from the ingredient soy sauce in line with the principle of carry-over. Egg yolk flavor ice-cream sample ingredients have whole egg powder, whole egg powder belongs to egg products, egg products in the maximum use of sorbic acid is 1500 mg/kg, so according to the size of the content of sorbic acid detected in the ice-cream, ice-cream in the sorbic acid from the whole egg powder is more likely to be brought in. Similarly, margarine is included in the ingredients of the batch of cakes, and the maximum use level of sorbic acid in margarine is 1000 mg/kg. According to the detected level of sorbic acid in the cakes, it is more likely that the sorbic acid in the cakes is brought in by margarine.

In addition, soy sauce beef belongs to cooked meat products, in which the maximum use level of sorbic acid is 75 mg/kg, and the measured sorbic acid content of the sample is 129 mg/kg, which exceeds the maximum use level, the author believes that this situation is not in line with the principle of carry-over, the principle of carry-over applies to the final product must not be added and there is a detected, if the final product of a certain additives is a limited number of regulations, then the food If there is a limit on an additive in the final product, then the food operator should monitor its dosage on a regular basis.

II. Non-Bring-in Principle in Food Testing

In addition to the above situation of ingredient carry-over, in the process of daily food testing, there will also be a class of food itself contains some kind of additives or non-edible substances rather than adding the situation.

For example, formaldehyde background was found in shrimp gurgling (Turbot), 18 batches of shrimp gurgling samples were tested in our laboratory, in which the formaldehyde content ranged from 36.7 to 213 mg/kg. Sun Liang et al. in their study on the formaldehyde background content of Turbot and its influencing factors concluded that [2], the range of the detection value in the edible state was 10.40 to 223.80 mg/kg.

It is uncertain whether formaldehyde in these 18 batches of dragonhead fish in our laboratory was added artificially. In addition benzoic acid in dairy products was also detected in our laboratory [3].

Principle of food additive carryover

Problems in food sampling

Catering sampling in a class of homemade food mainly includes fermented noodle products, fried noodle products, soy sauce and marinated meat products, other cooked meat products, etc., this kind of ready-to-sell food production process, add ingredients commonly seasonings such as soy sauce, sauce, etc., as well as fillings, including soybean paste, jam, meat and pickled vegetables, etc., these ingredients often contain additives. In the sampling process, due to the separation of sampling and testing, it is more difficult to obtain information on the composition of the ingredients of the samples, and the sampling personnel do not record the composition of the ingredients of the samples taken and other information, which makes it difficult to determine the post-test.

Production circulation sampling samples of prepackaged food is more, the ingredient list provides complete information on the ingredients, but the principle of bringing in certain problems in practice. According to the conditions in clause 3.4.1 b, c and d of GB 2760-2014, the actual estimation of whether the detected content of additives in the final product exceeds the carry-over level of ingredients relies solely on the production formula data provided by the enterprise, such as by the testing organization and then verify the formula data is not only a large amount of workload, but also impractical to operate.

Conclusion

I. It is recommended to establish a more operable carry-over principle regulation.

For the domestic food production process of the use of additives and food ingredients to carry out a full investigation and statistics, the establishment of a resource base, according to the production process and formula of each type of food, will be brought into the principle of taking into account the development of the additive limit value of this type of food, for the detection than the provisions of the maximum amount of use of the more operational, and for the production of enterprises, the provisions of the maximum amount of use of the additives can be used as a reference for the production process, as the final product inspection, because the final product testing, the maximum amount of use of additives can be used as a reference. For manufacturers, the maximum use level of additives can be used as a reference for the production process, because the detection data of final product inspection and the addition data are two different data [4-5].

Food and beverage samples should provide more comprehensive sample information

Sampling staff training should be strengthened, the sample should be taken at the scene as far as possible to the operator to obtain detailed sample information, such as ingredients, the use of seasonings, etc., the sample name entry should be standardized to reflect the true attributes. For example, when sampling milk tea in a beverage store, it must be required to provide a list of ingredients, the name of milk tea or fruit juice needs to be clear.

In particular, it should be pointed out that the jellyfish samples, jellyfish is divided into salted jellyfish head and edible jellyfish, and salted jellyfish head in the alum additive limit is 1.8%, edible jellyfish in the aluminum residue limit of 500 mg/kg, and the two detection methods are not the same, therefore, in the catering restaurant to take the sample is to be sure to figure out the attributes, or else it will give the test to determine the difficulties.

Third, the inspection agency should give full consideration to the principle of additives and samples brought into the background

Detection of additives should be strictly in accordance with the GB 2760-2014 standard, and when the sample detected an additive, the first should be based on the use of ingredients in the ingredient list of the sample, to determine whether it is permissible to use the additives, especially food and beverage food seasonings, additives allowed to use the situation is more prevalent, such as the above situation does not exist, then we should consider the sample itself whether there is a If the above situation does not exist, then it should be considered whether the sample itself has a certain background value of additives. The above factors should be combined to make a final determination.

References:

[1] National Health and Family Planning Commission of the People’s Republic of China. National standard for food safety: GB2760-2014 [S]. Beijing: China Standard Press, 2014:1-3.

[2] Sun Liang, Chen Na, Shen Xianghong, et al. Study on the background content of formaldehyde and its influencing factors in dragonfish[J]. Chinese Journal of Health Surveillance,2009,16(3):254-257.

[3] CHEN Yacheng, JIA Caifeng, WANG Jiangyuan, et al. Determination of benzoic acid in milk by HPLC and source analysis[J]. Food Industry Science and Technology,2010,31(6):94-95.

[4] YANG Na-Li, FENG Yan-Jun, WANG Ying, et al. Application of food additive use standards in food safety supervision in the catering industry[J]. Journal of Food Safety and Quality Inspection,2020,11(24):9481-9486.

[5] Yan Jiangyu. Analysis of the key points of “ingredient carryover” and “background carryover” of food additives[J]. Food Safety Journal,2015(12):106-108.