Lab innovations is thrilled to announce that Campden BRI, the UK’s largest independent food and drink research body, will once again be deepening its links with the show.

Campden BRI will run a free-to-attend conference programme, host two external seminar sessions and will also be exhibiting at Lab Innovations, which takes place on 2 & 3 November 2016 at NEC, Birmingham.

The Campden BRI Theatre will feature three presentations on each day, exploring core areas of activity from the food and drink manufacturing industry, including microbiology, chemistry and sensory.

The conference will kick off with an interactive session, ‘Tastes great’ – Prove it! hosted by Sue Purcell, Section Manager of Sensory Training at Campden BRI. During her workshop, Purcell will explore the world of sensory tasting and demonstrate how we can use sensory science methodology to guarantee any on-pack sensory claims.

Roy Betts, Head of Microbiology at Campden BRI, will host the second session ‘The Bug Tucker Challenge: would you eat bacteria, mould or algae?’ where he will consider how microorganisms are beneficial to our diet. Betts will also give attendees the opportunity to hear about the creation and manufacture of “microbial” foods, with an optional testing element too.

The final presentation that will be held at the conference will be presented by David Bellis, Analyst - Chromatography, and Danielle Cawdron, Packaging Group Manager, Campden BRI. The session, ‘From the Lab to the Label: Salt, sodium and other elements’, will explain how food is measured and labelled before exploring element profiles of food, showing where it has come from and what it claims to be. They will also analyse how food is tested for good elements, like Selenium and Iodine, and for those that are toxic, like Lead and Mercury.

Those in attendance will also be able to register for Campden BRI’s external seminars. These sessions will give attendees the opportunity to hear first-hand experiences from professionals supporting core activity in the food microbiology industry.

The first seminar, held on Wednesday 2^nd November will focus on ‘Current Challenges in Food Microbiology’. This session will illustrate the key areas and challenges that face the Microbiologists at Campden BRI, as a result of advances in microbiological testing. This is an ideal opportunity for Microbiologists, Virologists, Food Safety Managers and Hygiene team members.

Continuing to showcase the programmes depth will be the second seminar session titled ‘Food Microbiology Method Testing: validation versus verification’.  Few can argue that we need to be able to test foods for microorganisms and obtain these results quickly. But, do we know if these new test methods are appropriate and whether the results they produce are comparable to older methods? The session will focus on MicroVal, a Microbiological test method certification scheme that is being used to rigorously test these new methods.  Those in attendance will hear about the role of MicroVal, the benefits of method testing and certification and the detail of the ISO 16140 standard that is used to validate test methods.

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