(Thermo Fisher Scientific: Waltham, MA) -- Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. recently announced that its global Food Safety Response Center located in Dreieich, Germany, has developed two new analytical screening methods to detect petroleum contamination in oysters and fish—specifically, hydrocarbons and polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), resulting from the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Scientists working in the center used oil samples collected from the Gulf region to develop step-by-step testing procedures that can be quickly implemented by food and environmental laboratories, with the goal of protecting consumers from potentially contaminated seafood found in Gulf waters.

“We created our global Food Safety Response Center to help our laboratory customers around the world quickly mobilize during a food contamination crisis,” says Marc N. Casper, president and CEO of Thermo Fisher Scientific. “Our new methods for detecting petroleum in oysters and fish were designed to significantly reduce analysis time and enable our customers to meet the demand for rapid and reliable testing of seafood from the Gulf for the foreseeable future.”

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