No abstract

Ensuring food safety in various steps along the entire food value chain is crucial to prevent undesired and harmful substances entering the food humans consume. Pesticides and antifungal agents used during growth, processing or along the logistic chain from the field to the consumer can be toxic causing a range of symptoms from stomach pain to the death of the consumer even at trace levels of concentrations. To prevent dangerous contaminants from entering the food chain governmental restrictions on a large number of components have been established and are tightly monitored. For a large number of tests complex and sophisticated equipment is required along with time consuming sample preparation steps, not permitting instantaneous sampling of the specimen at the point of measurement or in a timely manner. High costs and poor reproducibility of commercially available substrates have so far limited the successful application of surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) measurements along the food value chain. The use of an affordable handheld Raman instrument with affordable, mass-producible and reproducible SERS substrates will be described in the frame of the contribution with respect to requirements imposed at various stages along the food value chain.