PFAS: Navigating regulations, challenges, risk management and testing in the food supply chain

Join our upcoming panel discussion to hear from industry experts as they discuss the new regulations around PFAS, along with the challenges and approaches to managing the issues.

In the coming years, the implementation of food safety testing regulations will expand globally. The prevalence of PFAS across the supply chain, concerns around health impacts, dietary risk exposure and supply chain assurance are all components of these soon-to-be implemented requirements.

Currently, the EU and China regulate a limited regulatory framework encompassing a small list of PFAS compounds in food, ingredients, beverages and feed. However, the EU has proposed an expanded list in Commission with approximately 29 compounds proposed and further expansion expected over the coming years is all part of the current discussion. The REACH updates in 2025 are expected to impact packaging and process control, while in the United States, AOAC (AOAC SMPR 2023.003) has ratified a proposed method to test residues of up to 40 PFAS chemicals incurred in food and feed.

These regulations could have an impact on production and supply in the food value chain and drive a need for more testing and mapping of PFAS in foodstuffs.

With the potential of new PFAS method regulations, come new testing challenges. Although AOAC haven’t fully ratified the PFAS method, it has been approved as a standard method performance requirement, it still brings the potential addition of new compounds to the testing regimen which in turn brings analytical challenges and the approach to this analysis is as critical as the choice of supplier to assure consumers that the food they consume is as safe and risk-free as they expect. 

Key learning points: 

• Explore the evolving food safety regulatory landscape and the impact of new technologies.
• Discuss collaboration opportunities between companies and regulators to improve compliance.
• Evaluate strategies for identifying and managing food safety risks within the supply chain.
• Focus on the role of data analytics in promoting  transparency and proactive risk management.

Presenter: Moderator – Professor Chris Elliot (Professor of Food Safety at Queen’s University Belfast)

Chris is Professor of Food Safety and Founder of the Institute for Global Food Security at Queen’s University Belfast. He served as Pro Vice Chancellor responsible for the Medical and Life Sciences Faculty between 2015 and 2018 and has published more than 450 peer-reviewed articles, many of them relating to the detection and control of agriculture, food, and environmental contaminants.

Presenter: Lorna De Leoz (Global Food Segment Manager, Agilent Technologies) 

Lorna De Leoz, Ph.D., has numerous years of experience in the food industry as a bench chemist, graduate researcher, and mass spectrometry specialist. She is currently Global Food Segment Manager at Agilent Technologies. Previously she was a Research Chemist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology where she led a global study on the glycosylation of monoclonal antibodies and extended the scope of the NIST mass spectral libraries to include oligosaccharides. Lorna completed her Ph.D. in Chemistry at the University of California, Davis where her research focused on understanding the role of milk oligosaccharides in infant gut flora.

Presenter: Erin S. Baker, Ph.D. (Associate Professor, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) 

To date, she has published over 190 peer-reviewed papers utilizing different analytical chemistry techniques to study both environmental and biological systems. She is currently serving as the Vice President of Education for the International Lipidomics Society, a mentor for Females in Mass Spectrometry, and an Associate Editor for the Journal of the American Society for Mass Spectrometry. She has received seven US patents, two R&D 100 Awards, been named to the 2019, 2021, 2023, and 2024 Analytical Scientist Top 100 Power Lists, and was a recipient of the 2016 ACS Rising Star Award for Top Midcareer Women Chemists, 2022 ASMS Biemann Medal, and 2022 IMSF Curt Brunnée Award. Currently, her research group utilizes advanced separations and novel software capabilities to examine how chemical exposure affects human health.