Chemical Food Safety Applications of Capillary Electrophoresis Methodologies

Chemical hazards may be present in food due to their intended use during food production (i.e., residues), they may be intentionally added to food products to confer specific attributes (i.e., food additives), or they may simply occur at any of the stages of the food supply chain (i.e., contaminants). Since these chemical hazards represent a health risk to consumers, legislation has been developed to establish the maximum concentration levels of these substances in food, and to define control measures to monitor their presence in food products. In general, liquid chromatography (LC) and gas chromatography (GC) are used as analytical techniques in laboratories that are responsible for carrying out routine food safety analyses. During the last decades, capillary electrophoresis (CE) has been extensively investigated as an alternative (or complementary) separation tool to chromatographic techniques, and today, it is already a consolidated technique that can be implemented in routine food safety laboratories. This chapter presents the state of the art of CE in the field of chemical food safety and gives an overview of relevant applications in this area.