08/15/2018
Rockville, MD, April 24, 2018: AOAC announces new standards for determining sugars in animal and human food and for fructans in animal food today in Rockville, Maryland. These latest AOAC standards are being used to evaluate analytical methods that individually measure free nutritional sugars found in ingredients and foods consumed by animals, pets, and humans, and measure total dietary fructan, a type of polymer of fructose, in animal feed and pet food.
Free sugars comprise all mono- and disaccharides added to foods by the manufacturer, plus those naturally present in food products. Fructans comprise any DP>3 carbohydrate with one or more fructosyl-fructose linear or branched linkages which constitute a majority of the linkages in which fructose is the major constituent and glucose content is 33% or less.
?AOAC?s new sugar standards focus on analytes indicated as important for animal and human nutrition and are relevant and valuable to regulators and industry at an international level,? said Nancy Thiex, Thiex Laboratory Solutions LLC, and co-chair of the AOAC working group on sugars. ?Many recently developed food products have compounds that interfere with currently available methods for sugar testing. Further, a variety of products have been formulated to make claims for low levels of sugars, which the current methods cannot accurately measure.?
Currently, there are no approved methods for individually measuring mono- and disaccharides in animal feed or pet food. For fructans, although two AOAC Official Methods are available for foods, there are no fit-for-purpose methods applicable for animal food as current methods fail to recover branched fructans.
The two new standards were developed and approved by voluntary stakeholder consensus and prescribe the minimum analytical performance requirements for classes of analytical methods. Sugar methods should be able to determine fructose, glucose, sucrose, maltose, lactose, and galactose, and should account for common interferences, such as sugar alcohols in food. Fructan methods should include both branched and linear fructans in animal and pet foods. Methods will now be rigorously reviewed by subject matter experts against those standards and deemed scientifically sound and suitable for intended use.
AOAC INTERNATIONAL standards are developed and approved by voluntary stakeholder consensus and prescribe the minimum analytical performance requirements for classes of analytical methods. AOAC methods are rigorously reviewed by subject matter experts against those standards and deemed scientifically sound and suitable for intended use.
?AOAC methods undergo rigorous scientific scrutiny and demonstrate the highest level of confidence in analytical results,? said DeAnn L. Benesh, president of AOAC INTERNATIONAL. ?Our mission is to provide high-quality products and solutions for the analytical science community that are fit-for-purpose and recognized worldwide.?
Standards development activities for the sugar project is supported by the Association of American Feed Control Officials (AAFCO), American Feed Industry Association, (AFIA), Thermo Fisher, and Megayme.
AOAC INTERNATIONAL is a globally recognized, 501(c)(3), independent, third party, not-for-profit association and voluntary consensus standards developing organization founded in 1884. When analytical needs arise within a community or industry, AOAC INTERNATIONAL is the forum for finding appropriate science-based solutions through the development of microbiological and chemical standards. AOAC standards are used globally to promote trade and to facilitate public health and safety.
For more information, call (301) 924-7077 (worldwide) or (800) 379-2622 (toll free North America), visit www.aoac.org, or contact Dawn Frazier at dfrazier@aoac.org. AOAC is headquartered in Rockville, Maryland, USA.
Links:
https://www.aoac.org/AOAC_Prod_Imis/AOAC_Member/ANews/2018_News/Stories/NEWS_Story042418b.aspx
