2nd Joint Symposium and AOAC Task Force Meeting on Marine and Freshwater Toxins Analysis

Held in Baiona, Spain, May 1-5, 2011

By David Mazawa

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Pickering Laboratories was proud to sponsor the Second Joint Symposium and AOAC Task Force Meeting of Marine and Freshwater Toxins Analysis. This growing symposium addressed new developments, method validation efforts, and method implementation in the analysis of marine and freshwater toxins. A variety of methods needs for detecting saxitoxins, domoic acids, okadaic acids, azaspiracids, other seafood toxins and the cyanobacterial toxins were addressed. Presentations and discussions addressed special needs of the community ranging from emerging toxins to the ongoing replacement of the mouse bioassay with modern and fully validated chemical methods. Principle sponsor of the symposium was the University of Vigo, Spain, Department of Analytical and Food Chemistry.

New methods have been recently validated in an effort to replace the Mouse Bioassay. Due to the hard work of Jeff van de Riet et al. in his single laboratory validated study, the HPLC post-column oxidation method for analysis of paralytic shellfish toxins (saxitoxins) in shellfish, is now an official AOAC method (AOAC OMA 2011.02). Pickering Laboratories was there to support this occasion and to show the symposium that we have instrumentation perfectly suited for this method. For details on the method, please visit our website or contact Pickering Laboratories Technical Support.  

To view the official method, members should log onto AOAC's website: www.aoac.org